Tag: Sexual politics

City Of Paris Is Fined 90,000 Euros For Naming Too Many Women To Senior Positions

Mayor Anne Hidalgo

Under Mayor Anne Hidalgo, 11 female and five male officials were appointed in 2018 to high-level roles — despite a rule that at least 40% of such positions should go to people of each gender.

The city of Paris has been fined 90,000 euros for an unusual infraction: It appointed too many women to senior positions in the government.

In 2018, 11 women and five men became senior officials. That meant 69% of the appointments were women — in violation of a rule that dictated at least 40% of government positions should go to people of each gender.

In remarks on Tuesday to the capital’s governing body, Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she would deliver the check to the Ministry of Public Service herself — along with the women in her government.

“So there will be many of us,” she said.

Since 2019, French law provides a waiver to the 40% rule if the new hires do not lead to an overall gender imbalance, Le Monde explains. That’s the case for the city of Paris, according to the newspaper: Women still make up just 47% of senior executives on its government. And female city officials are paid 6% less than their male counterparts.

But the rule change comes too late to avoid the fine.

“It is paradoxical to blame us for appointments that make it possible to catch up on the backlog we had,” Antoine Guillou, the mayor’s deputy in charge of human resources, told Le Monde.

Hidalgo, a member of the Socialist party who was first elected mayor in 2014 and was reelected this year, says the aim is to resolve an existing imbalance toward men.

“Yes, we must promote women with determination and vigor, because the delay everywhere in France is still very great,” she told the Paris Council. “So yes, to promote and one day achieve parity, we must speed up the tempo and ensure that in the nominations there are more women than men.”

“In Paris, we are doing everything to make it a success, and I am very, very proud of a large team of women and men who carry together this fight for equality,” Hidalgo added.

Amélie de Montchalin, France’s Minister of Public Service, lamented the fine and called the provision “absurd.”

“@Anne_Hidalgo, the cause of women deserves better!” Montchalin tweeted. “I want the fine paid by Paris for 2018 to finance concrete actions to promote women in the public service. I invite you to the ministry to raise them!”

Source: City Of Paris Is Fined 90,000 Euros For Naming Too Many Women To Senior Positions : NPR

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Giscard grasped the 70s mood, but French women won their own rights

The French presidency of Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who died on Wednesday aged 94, was marked by a series of breakthroughs on women’s rights, most famously with the legalisation of abortion in 1975. But was the self-styled “moderniser” a driving force behind the reforms or was he merely in tune with the changing times?

Source: Giscard grasped the 70s mood, but French women won their own rights

Netflix apologises for ‘sexualising’ young girls in French film promo

Video streaming giant Netflix has apologised after its promotional material for a French film sparked accusations that it was sexualising young girls.

The award-winning Cuties (Mignonnes in its French release) follows 11-year-old black girl Amy as she grows up in a working-class area of Paris, defies her family and becomes aware of her burgeoning sexuality.

The poster promoting the film in France shows four brightly dressed girls throwing confetti as they walk up a street.Image

However, in the United States and internationally Netflix chose an image showing the four young stars posing in tight costumes baring their legs and midriffs.

“We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance,” Netflix said on Twitter late Thursday.

“We’ve now updated the pictures and description.” Continue reading “Netflix apologises for ‘sexualising’ young girls in French film promo” →

Actress ‘proud’ she walked out of French Oscars over Polanski

Actress ‘proud’ she walked out of French Oscars over Polanski

Actress Noemie Merlant has absolutely no regrets about walking out of the French Oscars after Roman Polanski won best director to cap what was perhaps the most bitter and fractious awards ceremony in French cinema history.

Merlant followed her “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” co-star Adele Haenel nd the acclaimed movie’s director Celine Sciamma, to the exit after Polanski won best film for “An Officer and a Spy”.

Haenel cried “Shame!” as they left, furious that the Cesars academy had honoured a man still wanted in the US for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977, and who has since had to deny several claims of sexual assault.

Haenel — a key figure in the French #MeToo movement, who last year revealed that she had been sexually harassed by a director as a teenager — had declared that “distinguishing Polanski is spitting in the face of all victims”.

“I am proud that I left with my comrades,” Merlant said of the dramatic night four months ago, which caused an earthquake in the French industry.

– ‘It had to happen’ –

“I think it is good that it caused a stir, that it started a debate.

“The world is changing, and going forward,” the actress told AFP.

“Now we are standing up and we are walking out when things have to change. It’s something I think that has to happen,” said Merlant, who made her breakthrough playing a woman radicalised by the Islamic State in the 2016 film, “Le Ciel Attendra” (Heaven Can Wait).

“Maybe five or 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have done it,” the actress admitted. But after working with “lots of female directors I began to ask myself some quite perturbing questions about women’s lives, about what they wanted to say, and their choices.”

Merlant, 31, said that while the Cesars ceremony was “extremely stormy”.

“I feel deep down that it opened up some things, both in the profession” and beyond it, even “among families and friends”.

– Younger generation shocked –

“It is something that people want to talk about — and even when people don’t want to talk about it, that too is interesting,” said Merlant, who was nominated for a best actress Cesar with Haenel.

“As women speak up, it allows you to ask questions about ourselves,” the actress said. “This is also why so many of this new generation of (women) are shocked” and angry about cases like Polanski’s.

Having worked with a lot of woman directors, Merlant said she has been lucky to star in so many female-driven stories.

“Up to know, I think the women that I played were not objects but the subject, and I want to keep it that way,” said the actress, the star of the new French film “Jumbo”, in which she plays a loner who forms a strange attraction to a fairground ride.

“I really love to go out of my comfort zone and to take on roles and stories that scare me, that take me somewhere else,” said Merlant told AFP in March, before the release of the film was delayed by the French lockdown.

 

Source: Actress ‘proud’ she walked out of French Oscars over Polanski – RFI