Yes, we must never stop talking about it, because if we think that all the legal advancements that have enabled the emancipation of women since Olympe de Gouges wrote her declaration of the rights of woman and the female citizen in 1791 – which deliberately refers gender equality to the political and human rights arenas – until the passing of the law on August 4, 2014, for real equality between women and men, if we think that all these advances are permanent, if we do not continuously revisit all these achievements, they regress.
Even though the civil code has been secular since 1804, it remains imbued with a strong patriarchal legacy (gender inequality, misogyny), and I would even say there is a tacit agreement with the religious to exclude women from civil life. It is by secularizing society, from 1867, by making communal school mandatory and free for girls, and in 1880 by opening colleges and high schools to them, that emancipation progresses.
The influence of Christianity remains very strong, when we continue to think that leaving Christianity leads to immorality; thus, it was necessary to create a secular morality, for the religious influence to transfer to secularism, and for Condorcet to base education on a scientific rather than religious foundation, so that we could educate men and citizens.
The battle is fought at the political level, but for Jules Ferry the obstacle remains in the customs; there is a male pride, a pride of the sex, a feeling of male superiority that slips into the best souls, and which needs to be challenged. Women’s emancipation must not be achieved solely against the Catholic discourse, but also against conservative republicanism.
Isn’t this a bit of the same issue we face today? The religious that we thought relegated to the private sphere raises its head to interfere in the social dialogue, Catholic demonstrations against abortion, contraception, assisted reproduction, marriage for all, the ABCD of Equality, gender theory on one side, Muslim demands for Sharia law to be recognized in its difference and visibility on the other side, Islamic veiling, special food in canteens, requests for adapted hours for women, obsession with virginity.
Can all these tensions, many of which concern women’s bodies, delay progress and emancipation? Only secularism, without an adjective, can guarantee our rights and our freedom.
The statistics are staggering
• 100% of CAC40 CEOs are men
• 84% of mayors are men
• 100% of public transport users have encountered sexist harassment at least once in their lives
• 1 in 3 women in the European Union has been a victim of physical or sexual violence at least once in her life
• 1259 women have been murdered in France since 2006, which is a woman every 2.5 days
• 130 facilities practicing abortion have closed in 10 years
• Gender inequalities intersect with social and territorial inequalities
• 40% of active women in rural areas are part-time, compared to only 30% nationally
• 50% of women in “sensitive urban areas” are out of the job market, compared to 30% of women nationally.
• A significant wage gap between women and men, still 19.5% overall. This leads to lower pensions of 37% for French women.
• Assemblies are becoming more female, but not the presidencies. 26.9% of women in the national assembly, 22.3% in the senate, 50% of departmental councilors, but 9.9% of presidencies…..
We see that gender inequalities persist and only strong political action, a strong penalization of acts of violence against women, combined with their protection, can make us all move towards real Equality.
by Jac Devier
