France claims great success in recruiting women into its armed forces, boasting one of the world’s highest percentages of women in uniform. What it hasn’t done is work to prevent sexual assault and harassment once they get there, reports The Washington Post.
That is about to change.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, on Tuesday presented a 36-page report on the problem and announced the military’s first effort to tackle it. This report cited 86 reported cases of sexual assault or harassment since the start of 2013 alone.
“These cases are totally unacceptable,” Le Drian told military officers and reporters in a Paris speech, vowing tougher penalties for those responsible — without citing any specific cases. “There is only one worthwhile policy: zero tolerance.”
The plan, prompted by a whistleblowing book published in February, calls for reforms as basic as including sexual harassment in the military code and creating a statistical database of offenses.
Read more of this AP report published by The Washington Post.