In January the latest annual report from France's Haut Conseil à l’Égalité entre les Femmes et les Hommes (HCE) on the “state of sexism in France” made headlines in numerous media outlets. Its conclusions had managed to grab the attention of journalists: according to the organisation - which was created to promote equality - sexism is on the rise among young adults, and is being spread via social networks in particular.
Long overshadowed, this independent advisory council created in 2013 and placed under the authority of the prime minister has achieved greater prominence since the appointment of a media insider as its president in early 2022. She is Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette, the former editor-in-chief of Le Point news magazine and former member of the broadcasting authority the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (now ARCOM).
The methods and behaviour of this government-appointed president are at the heart of an explosive letter addressed to her by HCE staff members, which Mediapart has seen. This letter, which is dated January 2nd and is nearly six pages long, lists a long series of grievances against 69-year-old Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette.
The letter is headed: “Warning about internal dysfunctions and proposed solutions.” And it is signed by “employees of the [HCE's] general secretariat”, about half a dozen administrative staff, almost all women. In the letter these staff members attack what they call “a toxic work environment” and a “collective malaise” inside the body whose main mission is to “come up with recommendations to combat sexism, gender-based violence and to promote equality in the workplace”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The letter refers to eight leaves of absence for sickness and seven early retirements in eighteen months which were “directly related to the situation as described”. According to Mediapart's information, three more sick leave absences have occurred since the letter was written.
According to internal correspondence, the occupational heath service for the organisation was alerted as early as December 2022 about the “worrying health situation” concerning members of the HCE's administrative staff. This was followed up on several occasions, right up to March, with a letter talking of “new recruits who quickly reached a state of work-related malaise comparable to that of their predecessors”.
Feminist 'crazies'
The most disturbing section of the note written by the HCE staff, entitled “serious abuses that are particularly inappropriate in the workplace context”, targets Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette personally. She is accused of “psychological harassment” of her team and of having made “statements on the borderline of what's legal”: of “statements contributing to the spread of rape culture”; and of “stigmatising LGBTQIA+ individuals”, “racist remarks”, and “sexist remarks”. What made the matter even worse, the letter pointed out, was that these comments “contradict the values defended by the institution and are part of a context of sexist violence that cannot be ignored within an institution such as the HCE”.
To understand the nature of these “remarks” Mediapart collected and cross-checked testimonies from eight current and former members of the HCE administration, who reported to us the words used, the date, and the context of these comments, all of them made in front of at least three witnesses.
All the statements cited below were sent to the HCE president for her response. Without denying their truthfulness, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette told Mediapart: “As for your questions that directly concern me, some of them are alarming in their wording and content, and their aim is clearly to support the implications of the criticisms you mention. There's obviously no way I'm going to explain myself in the face of such methods.”
In terms of remarks judged sexist or anti-feminist, the people interviewed cited this phrase: “Mona Ozouf [editor's note, a 93-year-old French historian and philosopher], she's a respectable feminist, not like the crazies we find these days”, the “hysterical feminists”. These comments were reportedly made in November 2022. The witnesses also talk of “problematic remarks about breastfeeding and women who stop working to take care of their child”. These remarks were reportedly made during a working lunch in June 2023.
There's a sense of cognitive dissonance between what we stand for and what we're forced to endure.
The HCE president is also accused of generally downplaying sexual violence. On the issue of a woman who was raped, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette remarked, according to those present: “What did she expect? It's clear that he went to her place to have sex.” During an external meeting with the women's rights organization the Fédération Nationale des Centres d'Information sur les Droits des Femmes et des Familles (FNCIDFF), the discussion shifted to the case of politician Gérald Darmanin, who is now interior minister. He had been accused of rape (the case was later dismissed) and abuse of weakness (the case was later dropped). In the discussion the HCE president reportedly stated that “well-known politicians have an aura that women can't resist”.
The HCE president was a political journalist for many years, notably at news magazines L'Express and Le Point, and indeed spent a good deal of time alongside senior political figures. According to several witnesses, at a farewell gathering for one employee she allegedly said that such men have a “visceral need to be admired” which explained why they were very unfaithful, why they liked women (citing former socialist and ex-IMF boss politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, often known as DSK, as an example), and even why they committed sexual violence.
Some members of the HCE team also attacked their boss over repeated comments concerning their weight.
Teachers facing 'classrooms of yobs'
The staff who signed the letter to the president also reproached her for “racist remarks”. They say that on several occasions after 2022 she made inappropriate comments about the physical appearance and ethnic origin of her grandchildren's nanny – she was of African origin – notably about her weight and large chest.
They also describe how at the beginning of 2023, during a video conference with the team, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette took a call from the caretaker at the residential building where she lived. After hanging up, she is said to have noted that he was Senegalese, adding: “He's very good, it's impressive, he has good French manners and expresses himself well.” Her comments left the others in the team meeting speechless.
Other complaints included “statements stigmatizing the suburbs”; in France, city suburbs are often some of the most run-down, deprived areas with many residents coming from an immigrant background. Several witnesses report that, during a meeting in autumn 2023 in front of several interns and employees, she referred to teachers in “the suburbs” facing “classrooms of yobs” .
The administrative team members were also concerned about remarks “stigmatizing LGBTQIA+ people”. In the spring of 2022, during a team meeting following the first working seminar of the co-chairs of the HCE's various committees, several staff members claim that Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette referred to the sociologist Florian Vörös as a “gay researcher” and joked about his clothing. In September 2023, at the HCE offices, she also allegedly criticized a supposed “transsexual lobby that mutilates little girls”.
Faced with these various remarks, one of the HCE employees described feeling a “sort of cognitive dissonance between what we stand for and what we are forced to endure”. A former member of staff added: “There was a huge sense of waste, due to the gap between the image that the HCE portrays externally and what is actually experienced internally.”
Lexomil pills
In another section of their letter, the team members also attacked the “deterioration of their working conditions”. They write of “disorganization”, a “lack of respect for procedures”, the adoption of “sometimes untenable and unjustifiable deadlines in the work schedule”, as well as the “devaluation and discrediting of employees' abilities”, and of “overtime or weekend work” that was “pushed by the president”.
In a discussion about the drafting of an ongoing report that still required two to three months of work, the president of the HCE allegedly said to the policy officer in charge of it: “But if I put a knife to your throat, this report would be written in three days!”
This is three tragedies in one. That of a man brought down by sordid accusations, that of a party losing its best candidate, and that of France, whose image has been tarnished.
The letter of January 2nd implicitly underlines the complexity of the work done by HCE's policy officers, which involves conducting exploratory research, leading a team and managing the schedules of 96 volunteer members, not to mention the dozens of experts interviewed, in order to write reports that undergo intense negotiations. They said they often feel treated as mere “pen-pushers” or “desk jockeys ordered to execute commands”, and feel they are “treated like children”.
According to several testimonies, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette also made jokes about team members who were suffering in the workplace and overworking. In June 2023, while the HCE's secretary-general was on sick leave, she reportedly said: “Apparently, it's fashionable to go on sick leave, I'm going to go on sick leave too, and you'll see that nothing gets done.” A few months earlier, in November 2022, when an employee confided in the president about her work-related distress, the president allegedly encouraged her to take Lexomil, a prescription anti-anxiety drug, even going so far as to fetch a tablet for her in front of the entire team.
The letter also mentions comments about privacy. During a job interview in February 2023 she is said to have asked a candidate: “Have you publicly stated on social media that you are leftwing?”
'Deterioration in quality of work'
In their note, the employees criticise a “shift in the institution's political orientation” and a “weakening of its pluralism”. Members of the administration also pointed to a “deterioration in the quality of work”. In fact, between 2019 and 2024, the HCE's annual report on the state of sexism in France, its main publication, has been significantly reduced in length from 138 to 34 pages. The team blamed the “prevalence of a mindset of the urgency of communication at the expense of the relevance of the work” and a “rejection of the expertise of researchers in social sciences”. They cited the departures of Florian Vörös and Sébastien Chauvin, which had been “motivated by ideological and methodological dysfunctions”.
In his resignation letter, published in the autumn of 2022 on Mediapart's participative Club section, sociologist Florian Vörös had indeed regretted the “fact that the HCE prioritizes short-term interrogation based on a survey, at the expense of the patient construction of a rigorous tool for measuring opinions on sexism”, leading to a “loss of meaning” when it came to his role as a researcher in this project. One staff member interviewed by Mediapart similarly regretted what they called the “extreme simplifications and sometimes gross errors in the unmethodical and sometimes political manipulation of figures and recommendations”.
Beyond that, the letter's signatories point out inconsistencies in the directives that come from the president's office, such as the rejection of inclusive writing - which the institution is officially supposed to promote - in the HCE's publications and tweets, and a boycott of the term “patriarchy”.
Asked specifically about all these points, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette told Mediapart: “It's not for me to answer questions from you about what is dealt with internally and in an adversarial manner within the team as it is comprised, nor about the basis of our work, other than to remind you that we fight relentlessly against the exploitation suffered by women, the inequalities they still endure, the violence they are subjected to, which can range up to acts of torture and barbarism in pornocrime, and the damaging effects of patriarchy, all immense tasks carried out with very limited means and all the difficulties that this entails.”
Responding to these words, employees and former employees contacted by Mediapart all expressed their incomprehension. And they all asked the same question: why was this problem of work-related malaise not addressed earlier, when occupational health had been informed in December 2022, and given that as an institution the HCE reports to the government's social ministries, which are supposed to be experts in such matters?
Another issue arises from an article written by Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette for Le Point back in May 2011, at the time of the so-called Sofitel affair involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn and allegations of sexual assault at a New York hotel. Had the minister for equality who appointed the former journalist to the HCE read what she had written in the past on subjects related to sexist and sexual violence? “This is three tragedies in one. That of a man brought down by sordid accusations, that of a party losing its best candidate, and that of France, whose image has been tarnished,” was her take on the fall of politician and IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn over a “humiliating sex scandal”.
As DSK was indicted for – among other things – sexual assault, kidnapping, and attempted rape, the president of the HCE expressed her concerns in this way: “What image are we giving to the world when the entire planet's televisions show a prestigious Frenchman entering a New York court, ramshackle, unshaven, and still handcuffed, treated no better than the crooks of colour who were brought before the judge before and after him?” She felt moved to write at the time: “For Dominique and his family, it is a terrible, almost unbearable ordeal.”
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter