On April 24th 2021 a female councillor publicly accused French journalist and polemicist Éric Zemmour of having forcibly kissed her. Mediapart has gathered the accounts of several other women who have also condemned the actions and behaviour of the journalist from Le Figaro newspaper and CNews news channel, whom some on the far-right want to be a candidate in next year's presidential election in France. When approached by Mediapart, Zemmour declined to respond to the allegations. Lénaïg Bredoux, David Perrotin and Marine Turchi report.
Born into a modest Jewish family in Tunis, Gisèle Halimi, who has died one day after her 93rd birthday, embarked on a legal career before moving to France, where she first made her name by defending activists from the Algerian nationalist movement before earning national fame as a campaigning lawyer for women's rights, notably in a 1972 trial where she defended a minor who was on trial for having an illegal abortion after a rape.
France’s conservative opposition party Les Républicains is readying itself for primary elections in November to decide who will become its candidate in presidential elections next year. In the debates, and speeches at its annual congress earlier this month, the issue of women’s rights has been placed at the fore. But not in the broad context of gender equality, rather as an argument over the issue of Muslim practices in France and the perceptions of a French ‘identity’. Ellen Salvi analyses the rhetoric, and the hypocrisy, of a new-found feminism among a party that remains firmly sexist.
As the ramifications of the Arab Spring continue, a new and extraordinary phenomenon has emerged. Across the Middle East and North Africa women have started putting their body – and images of their bodies - at the heart of the unfolding social revolution there. In some demonstrations a blue bra worn by a beaten protester has become a potent symbol of peaceful female resistance to male oppression. Story by Nadia Aissaoui and Ziad Majed.
Earlier this week, a meeting was organised by 45 feminist groups to which candidates in the French presidential elections were invited to explain their plans for advancing the cause of equality for women. For when it comes to equal wages for equal work, fighting sexism and violence against women and promoting contraception, women’s access to positions of power and responsibility, parity in the political arena or on company boards, or the question of Muslim women wearing the veil, the commitments vary across the French political spectrum.Sophie Courval reports.
