On Independence Day weekend, here's an open letter to the femmes of France about gender relations and sexual harassment in the French workplace, in light of the ongoing DSK saga playing out in New York:
To French women who want to see sexual innuendos dropped, and sexual harassment stopped, in your workplaces, American women offer vigorous support.
To young French girls who deserve to grow up with equal opportunity and sans sexual harassment, American women send a well-documented note of encouragement that the social order can indeed be changed; just look at the history of American workplace protections against such abuses.
Finally, to French women who have the guts to confront the status quo, American women, including those who don't consider themselves feminists, offer a most un-French shout out: You go girl!
It's a Sunday morning on July 4th weekend in Brooklyn, New York, and the news is filled with photos of a smiling Dominique Strauss-Kahn, released from bail in a New York City court two days ago after an alleged rape case against him was said to be "falling apart."
Whatever happens next in the story of the Sofitel maid against the former head of the IMF and leading Socialist Party contender for French President- - her claim that he'd sexually assaulted her in a hotel room rocked the Western political world -- the DSK case has opened up a can of cultural worms about sexual aggression against women in France.
In American law, sexual harassment is conceptually related to basic civil rights. It has been for decades. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, "Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
Yet in today's New York Times story, Frenchwomen Weigh Impact and Fallout of Strauss-Kahn Case, leading French women sound at best cautiously optimistic about public debate on this topic.
The French may call Americans prudes. But to an American eye, sexual innuendo, touching, invitations and outright aggression are less than charmant, especially when they occur at work.
I'd bet my last croissant that the average gal in New York or Chicago or Houston is generally unaware that many French women live with a level of culturally sanctioned sexual harassment that would drive them crazy. Who knew?
Not I, for one. I've sat in Parisian cafes, lingering over my café au lait and watched a parade of French women, teens to octogenarians, all the while trying to deconstruct what it is about them that's so stylish: Their deft use of accessories? Good haircuts? Thin waists and big belts?
Never once did it occur to me that in dressing to draw attention, they'd be drawing attentions they didn't dare demur. Because French women project a sense of personal power, my imagination didn't wander in the direction of their possible powerlessness. But it's the unwanted quandary of working women everywhere: an advance by the boss who pegs job promotions or salary increases to sexual availability.
I've always bought the Francophile line that French men are so very charming, that French women have a je ne seis quoi style, that sweet nothings are somehow more romantic when uttered with a French accent than a Texas twang.
Has the mystique of French fashion and romance obscured the reality of French sexual politics? Perhaps. Add French insistence on the privacy of one's personal life to the mix, and you've got a perfect recipe for sexual exploitation in the workplace.
"People have started raising questions about the relations between men and women in France," says Hélène Périvier, co-director of the gender program at the Institut d'Études Politiques. She tells the New York Times, "And those questions won't go away."
To someone of the bra-burning, Equal Rights Amendment-demanding generation, this response to the phenomenon of the sexualized workplace sounds mild -- even a few decades late.
From this American's perspective, the peek into the French landscape of sexual advances and sexual harassment afforded by the DSK case feels shockingly familiar, like a bad dream revisiting from the 1960s. It's all too easy to recall the inner turmoil cause by the boss' hand fondling one's knee, the unasked-for invitation to dinner when his wife is away.
At least two generations of working women in the US have got the gist, if not the precise language, of the legal boundaries between friendly banter and sexual harassment. For the record, the EEOC defines the latter thus: "Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment." It's harassment, not play, "when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment."
July 4th is American Independence Day, when the colonies revolted against the British crown -- with French assistance -- and declared Americans free in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. There can be neither liberty nor happiness for working women who face a culture of male sexual aggression in offices, factories and on the job.
So, from across the pond: Mademoiselles and madames who are fighting to eliminate sexual violence and harassment from the French workplace, you have our support.
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Sexism is certainly not a French exception. France has its gender issues but so has the USA. If the 'DSK affair’ in US ends up as a false rape charge, many women there will go on touting that anyway all men are potential rapists and many men being convinced that all women that are victims of rape are liars. When do these people start talking to each other, other than through a lawyer? Perhaps it is American women who need most help in their dealing with gender issues?
Anyway, the author seems to disapprove of gender relations, as she perceives them, among the French. I just wonder how you can assume what they are based on the "flaneur" culture of Paris cafes? LOL
The alleged rape has shown how frightening it is to be caught in the gaze of Prosecutor and Tabloid. Six weeks ago they destroyed DSK and now it's her turn....and who is seen as hating women now?
France is not behind America and nor is it ahead. Though I will say despite the laws America has the misogynists here are outrageous and common place. It's just the child-men snicker their hate only to one another. As a naturalized American I've found it shocking.
Nothing to boast about here in America and there is a world of difference between a lusty man and a crazed lecher. Women should not be subjected to either but nor is it the same mentality that supports rape in America's quiet brotherhood of hate. I am glad there are strict laws here but do not mistake this for progress ...American men do not just hate foreigners like DSK but women too. Just read how the tabloids are destroying the alleged victim.
If as the song goes, "The lady lets her walkin' do her talkin' and she's a great conversationalist", how is a man to guess she does not want "attention"?
The right to pursue careers outside the house, full with day care facilities and the like, was obtained by French women two generations earlier than elsewhere. The reason: after WW I there were not enough men to fill the factories. Women were encouraged to work - even if they couldn't vote! The fabulous French system of day care and other taxpayer-financed forms of help with the kids dates from then. French women were working when Edith Bunker was still doing the housekeeping.
Not being used to fighting for emancipation has its drawbacks: on equal pay and equal representation France does lag behind. But French women, certainly young ones, do not feel or act inferior to men in any way. I remember an anecdote during Obama's campaign when a woman, asked what she was going to vote, asked her husband. I find it hard to imagine any French woman asking her husband what she should vote.
I think French women are more conscious than women elsewhere that strength does not mean copying men; that equality does not mean sameness. I find them extremely strong, and strongly feminine at the same time.
I am a french woman and I do beleive that, like almost all political and social issues, feminists ones must be handle by the first implicated the citizens, and Yes we (french women) are old enough to know what is better for us acccording to our culture, and our needs and aims.
But I do thank my american sister for her supportive letter : friendship and concern from everywhere are always welcome....
But it is maybe also time for a french, in return, to support her dear american sisters:
Of course we are still facing problems here as you noticed, but we also had victories in certain issues :
A vast majority of french women chose to work and have children, because of a very good public children-day-care-net (open to all, and not very expensive), familly allowances tax founded, and of course a confortable social system.
Here, ending abortion is not on the political agenda, or even in discussion (nor by the right or the left). We are talking about make contraception and abortion easier and less traumatic to ask or to obtain (especially for teens).
Finally we are continuously trying to improve life standards of (poor) single-mothers, without any moral consideration.
I hope you will enjoy, soon, such a situation in the USA.
With american "idealism", french "rationalim" and scandinavian "pragmatism", I am sure that, we, all women, will prevail.
Thank you again for your friendship and support.
In my opinion to read that a vast majority of republican representants are pro life.....implies at least that abortion is still a subject of discussion...(that is what i meant)
but of course I may be wrong....
Anyway thank you for your correction, it is good to have other views...and to improve mine...
It was a pleasure to exchange with you
I'd give ANYTHING to have what my French sisters have!
DSK asked the hotel female staff out on dates, talked about the flight attendant's ass once seated on the Air France plane, and multiple women have reported they had to fight him off after he forced unwanted advances on them. He's a creepy guy who acts unprofessionally towards subordinate female staff and women he comes into contact with while performing his job. But if the French elect him president, that is their choice in their democracy.
If I were French, I'd hate you for just your arrogant meddling to begin with.
And the rich, powerful serial assaulter goes free.
You seem to be forgetting one major point which is this case, like all cases, is not category v. category, ie, rich v. poor, powerful v. powerless, man v. woman: it is about human being v. human being. Human beings are not stereotypes. Not all women are victims, not all men are predators. This is not Law and Order. This is real life, beyond stereotypes.
As you point out, the PROSECUTION presented the elements, and not DSK's expensive defense team. The very people who wanted to nail a major victory and cause the fall of one of the most powerful people in the world, who are elected and paid to serve the legal interest of the people and protect society from real criminals.