Caroline De Haas

The different ways in which the two countries have reacted to the #MeToo movement has been striking. In the United States there was a strong and powerful response whereas in France there has been a backlash, in some quarters. To find out why France has been slower to embrace this movement, which began a year ago, Mediapart asked women who had supported or led the campaign on this side of the Atlantic. Marine Turchi reports.

Voters on the French Left are already fed up. Fed up that their candidates did not make it through to the second round of the French presidential election on May 7th, and fed up about being told to vote for a candidate whom they despise - Emmanuel Macron – in order to stop the far right's Marine Le Pen from gaining power. As Lénaïg Bredoux reports, some voters on the Left say that they do not want to give centrist Macron a convincing mandate and that they will either not vote or will leave their ballot paper blank – unless the outcome looks too close to call.

On Monday February 29th the prime minister Manuel Valls announced that the government was postponing for two weeks the formal presentation of a new bill reforming employment law. This concession came after days of vociferous opposition to the bill from trade unions, students and many members of France's ruling Socialist Party itself who see the measure as an attack on workers' rights. Mediapart's Lénaïg Bredoux, Rachida El Azzouzi, Mathilde Goanec and Mathieu Magnaudeix analyse how what was intended to be a flagship government reform went so badly wrong.