- MP Céline Calvez was entrusted with a mission on “the place of women in the media in times of crisis” by Marlène Schiappa.
- "Triggering this mission is in itself a way of alerting and increasing vigilance", judges the LREM deputy from Hauts-de-Seine.
- The elected representative wants her proposals to act after the crisis.
After the outcry on the front page of the newspaper Le Parisien , featuring four men to think about the next world, deputy Céline Calvez was charged by the Secretary of State for equality between women and men, Marlène Schiappa, of a mission on "the place of women in the media in times of crisis". Interview with the deputy La République en Marche des Hauts-de-Seine on the outlines and objectives of her mission.
Honored to see me entrusted by @MarleneSchiappa with this mission on the place of #women in # media in times of crisis 📺 📰 🎙
➡️ What place for #expert? 👩⚕️
➡️ What place for women #journalists? 👩💼
➡️ How to ensure their representativeness? 🙋♀️
At work ✊ https://t.co/ERuEogy9H3
You have been entrusted with a mission by Marlène Schiappa on the place of women in the media in times of crisis. What is this mission about?
I was commissioned on Sunday April 5 and it was made public in the process, because there was a lot of attention on this subject. This shows the will of the government. My mission is to be able to process, measure and formulate proposals in response to an observation: that of the reduction of the place of women in the media. It's a paradox: [in this crisis] we have many women on the front line - caregivers, checkout staff - and we don't find them in the media and in the pages, not even on the last page. There is a contrast between a renewed social existence and this degradation of the place of women in the media. I mean "media" in the broad sense of the term, audiovisual media and print media.
Have you already worked on the subject?
I bring equality issues to the delegation of women's and men's rights in the National Assembly. I notably dealt with the place of women in science, which gave rise to a report in May 2018. The other point is that within the Committee on Cultural Affairs of the National Assembly I am rapporteur for opinion on the budget of the media and cultural industries, and I am part of the board of directors of Radio France therefore I have an expertise of the media sphere.
Finally I worked before being a member of Parliament in the communication sector so I was able to observe these representation issues when it was necessary to organize conferences, seminars, make videos ... It is said that at one point we put on the glasses of equality and well for my part the glasses are well anchored on my nose! But we all have prejudices. When I was told that in the two cities in my riding, Levallois and Clichy, there were two women commissioners, I was surprised, when I shouldn't have! We have almost 25% of women commissioners, but in my imagination the commissioner was a man ... Vigilance must be at all levels.
Have you observed any backsliding in the place of women in the media since the start of the crisis?
The trigger for this mission was the front page of the newspaper Le Parisien with four men who tell the world about, and on which we were able to be numerous and many to react on social networks. A few days before other facts challenged, it is in particular a photo of Paris Match with the analysis committee around the President of the Republic, where the framing of the photo made disappear women who already were not very numerous in this group. There was also a testimony from a journalist who was part of the France Télévisions sports teams who was able to talk about the atmosphere that prevailed there [Clémentine Sarlat, who was to co-present Stade 2 and was unable to do so on his return from maternity leave, denouncing in particular "very heavy jokes"].
What is important is not only the outcome of journalistic work but also the process, the framework of the decision and the flow of information. We had an exchange with the Parisian management to tell the story of this front page, and we will have to do it with the other media. We can also mention the newspaper Le Monde which dealt with visions of the future [Ideas pages] which admittedly brought up the testimony of a woman but a few days after the front page of the Parisian , it was a bit light. And then Le Monde Magazine with a special men's fashion edition [covering 16 male photographers], but it was a bit distressing.
16 front-page photographers from Le Monde Magazine, 16 men. Same thing at Télérama with the list of 5 photographers ... 5 men.
Last week, the men told us about the world. This week, they show it to us. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/9Dm05bIwNX
We have the impression that on the guests on the TV or radio set there is an active search to have the department heads [who are going to be rather men] rather than other more targeted positions, where we would find more women , and why ? Because we always call the same because they are in our mind, and it is complicated to change habits. When we speak with a BFM TV programmer to find out how he usually contacts his guests, he replies that he contacted the one who passed two hours before on LCI… However there are guides like the Guide des experts [an online directory of thousands of experts].
How will you go about your mission?
More generally, we have to look at how, in times of crisis, the operating modes are disrupted or not. On the one hand we have alerts on how the editorial conferences bring together fewer people, and on the other some and some tell us that this is done very well ... Maybe not everyone is associated in the same way, even without the desire for exclusion. The idea is to see if in the current operating mode there are reasons for this less vigilance, to avoid repeating the same errors.
There will also be a joint supervision of the Ministry of Culture. We will be able to benefit more easily from the assistance of the institutions working on the issue, I am thinking of the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) in particular, which has developed an analysis tool over 700,000 hours of programs over several years, it will take see how to adapt their research approach to this period of crisis.
We have made a list of people or organizations that we want to contact, which already reaches several pages, I would like there to be a hearing work, which should allow to exchange, therefore rather in round table than one to one ". There is of course also the documentary resource: we highlighted the studies of the CSA and also the mission of Michèle Reiser in 2008 on the image of women in the media. What is needed is to look at what is done in other countries. At the Financial Times when you write an article you automatically give the number of occurrences of women and men, for example ...
Do you already have suggestions for proposals?
It is a bit early to say, we will look at the proposals already made to see if they should not be applied, or if we need to invent others. The ambition is to go beyond the observation. Triggering this mission is in itself a way of alerting and increasing vigilance, but this mission must lead to making valid proposals beyond the period of crisis. There is an exacerbation of inequality of treatment during the crisis, well we must be able to exacerbate the means to respond to it.
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