"In the face of violence against women, we must act from childhood"

• Isabelle Rome, the new Minister Delegate for Equality between Women and Men, Diversity and Equal Opportunities, gives

  20 Minutes

  her first interview to the written press.

• She recounts her past as the youngest judge in France, her discovery of prison, a "prison shock" which created in her a social fiber and her feminist and communist grandmother.

• She also tells us about her priority projects, in particular education and violence against women.

Justice, abortion, professional equality, education…

spoke with Isabelle Rome, the new Minister Delegate for Equality between Women and Men, Diversity and Equal Opportunities, who summarizes her priority projects for us.

Among them, education, since the minister wants "something more solid" to train children for equality between girls and boys.

And women who are victims of violence, for whom Isabelle Rome wants them to be able to benefit from priority access to the various aids available.

Isabelle Rome, the general public does not yet know you well.

What kind of woman and leader are you?

Would you agree to give one of your qualities and one flaw?

A quality ?

I think you can say “determined” and “committed”.

And a flaw… [She thinks] An apparent reserve.

Or an apparent naivety.

You might think I'm reserved or naive.

That's what I can send back.

Because maybe I don't have an obvious fluency right away.

And [regarding naivety] because I still believe that anything is possible, that you're never done for.

I know that people consider me a care bear, which I am not.

It seems rather nice as a default.

Yes, but in some circles where patriarchy is very dominant, what I send back is not necessarily considered a strength...

You were confronted, in Lyon, with the prison.

What do you keep from this experience?

What memory marked you?

It was my first post, as a sentence enforcement judge, I was 23, I was the youngest judge in France, and for me it was a prison shock.

My parents were teachers.

I come from a modest but not disadvantaged background.

This discovery of the prison environment was a discovery of all the suffering in the world... Whether it be material misery, psychological disorders, isolation, the difficulty of reintegrating... I took it in full figure at 23 years old.

It was an accelerated learning of human life in all its asperities.

If I hadn't had this founding experience, I might not have had the same journey afterwards.

This passage created in me a social fiber.

I also learned a method there: that one is never very good when one is alone,

that we must always look for partners and act in a multidisciplinary way.

I have worked with psychiatrists, doctors, associations, local authorities… And finally on the merits, [I learned] that respect for human dignity must be kept as a red thread.

Are you a woman on the left, on the right, or both "at the same time", like Emmanuel Macron?

[Without hesitation, barely finished the sentence] I would say that I am a woman of the left.

And that I fully recognize myself in the government as it is, led by Elisabeth Borne, who has a career of republican meritocracy.

She broke all the glass ceilings herself.

And she is a fighter for equality between women and men, she says it herself.

Your grandmother was a communist, right?

And feminist?

[Smile] Yes, she was a peasant, communist, feminist.

She received at her home when she was old the ladies who had worries.

It wasn't an association helping victims, it was an informal network, it helped them... She didn't call herself a feminist, but I found documents, after her death, proving that she had joined a sort of women's alliance – I don't know the exact name anymore… It was in the 1930s. My grandmother didn't go to school for long, but she didn't make any mistakes.

She always said to me, "Look at that word, it's not pretty."

What will be your first projects?

My number one priority will be the fight against violence against women, the first pillar of the great cause of the five-year term of the President of the Republic.

I take this opportunity to give you a word about my method: I really want to be involved in consultation-action, to try to build concrete things together.

So, on the violence, we have made good progress on the protection of victims: we have gone in three years from 300 to more than 4,000 serious danger telephones today.

More than 1,100 anti-reconciliation bracelets have been pronounced.

There are nearly 420 social workers in the gendarmeries and police stations, there were 260 at the start of the Grenelle in 2019. 157,000 police officers and gendarmes received training on this subject.

As a senior equality official at the Ministry of Justice for the past four years, I have identified an issue on which we can make progress.

It is when the victim obtains a measure that will protect him, such as a protection order.

The idea would be to better help him fly on his own.

Knowing that in the context of domestic violence she is often under the influence of her attacker, and that if we do not help her, she may be tempted either not to speak or to come back.

And that's often what happens.

It could be a daily help, a help on health, I will come back to clarify this soon, it is under discussion.

These devices already exist...

Yes, we have already implemented many measures, but we need to be more reactive in the implementation.

It is necessary to simplify, to trace a priority access.

That everything starts, without it being complicated.

It is currently being assessed, we are working on it with my government colleagues.

And I think that we must also act upstream.

Violence against women is a structural problem within our society: 80% of victims of spousal homicides are women, the same for sexual violence.

We must act from childhood, and strengthen education for equality between girls and boys, and later do real prevention.

I spoke with the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, and we are working on this subject.

We need to be able to offer this awareness without causing rejection.

If we impose devices vertically, we run to failure.

For example, we could use the time reserved for the awareness week before March 8 to offer something more solid, a framework that we are sure is applied everywhere.

You are said to be in favor of the establishment of special courts for violent men.

Can you explain to us what it is, and why?

In the program of the President of the Republic appears the concept of specialized justice.

It is better to use this term, which is also valid for the smallest courts, because it is not necessarily a special court, springing from the ground, but what matters is that the judges are well trained.

I raised this subject with the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupont-Moretti.

We will have to see how to apply it.

Justice has made great progress in recent years, with the establishment of emergency services.

Specific circuits have been set up in the courts to deal with these complaints as proactively as possible.

123 courts out of 163 have an emergency channel.

But there is still a way to go, which will have to be the subject of interministerial work.

Of course, justice is not the only file in your department.

Women have a wage income 22% lower than that of men, what do you intend to do?

A lot has been done during the previous five-year term with the introduction of the professional equality index, which makes it possible to measure income gaps and introduces financial penalties.

And the Rixain-Castaner law, which imposes quotas in the governing bodies of companies with more than 1,000 employees.

I am not looking to legislate on this right away, but on the other hand I will perhaps go further upstream, to ensure that we have more women likely to reach the highest positions, without we no longer need these quotas.

We can activate other levers: fight against sexism, improve the balance between private life and professional life, have more women in the sectors that allow access to certain high schools, etc.

Abortion has burst into the news, with the decision of the American Supreme Court.

You support a proposal to revise the Constitution on this subject but that implies a referendum.

While a draft revision from the Head of State would only require a vote in Congress.

Do you intend to convince the President of the Republic to avoid a referendum on the subject?

I will carry this reform with all my might to MP Aurore Bergé.

Afterwards, this path is the President of the Republic who will choose, with the Prime Minister.

It is not for me to position myself on that.

And I don't have an extremely strong opinion on the chances of one or the other [solution] succeeding.

The Prime Minister said of the Damien Abad case that “a number of testimonies deserve to be taken into account”.

Not for Secretary of State Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, also accused of rape.

Aren't there two weights, two measures?

There is an open investigation, I can not say anything about the case of the Secretary of State.

The Jacquie et Michel site still hosts rape videos, why don't you ask for the site to be closed immediately, until the light is shed on what is there?

A judicial investigation is underway in this case.

I don't know how it will turn out, but it's outrageous, and I don't understand how hosts can leave such ignominy on their platforms.

Company

Police custody, “rape and pimping” and “porn impunity”… Back to the “Jacquie and Michel” case

Policy

Investigation opened after a complaint of attempted rape against Minister Damien Abad

• Company

• gender equality

• Wage inequalities

• Discrimination

• Sexism