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The name of Yvette Roudy, full-time prime minister (1981-1986) of the status of women, remains associated with six laws against gender inequality it promulgated during his five-year term. Almost 90 years old, the former minister looks back on the status of women in France today, her singular career and the reissue of the American Feminist Bible, The Feminine Mystique , which she translated into French in the 1960s. Interview.
RFI : The first official celebration in France of the International Women's Rights Day is up to you. Do you still remember your first 8th of March ?
Yvette Roudy : Yes, very good. It was in 1982, nine months after the socialist government came to power. As Minister for Women's Rights, I managed to convince President Mitterrand of the need to officially celebrate this date. The communists had appropriated the day. We had to recover it on behalf of all French women. The Socialist Party to which I belonged was violently against, but François Mitterrand who understood the political and symbolic stakes of this day immediately agreed. There was even a big party at the Elysee, with 400 women invited and a presidential speech outlining the roadmap of my ministry.
What was this roadmap ?
It was an exciting time. After being in opposition for almost two decades, the Socialists had returned to power with the promise to change life with our laws. The very existence of my ministry, a full-fledged Ministry of Women's Rights , was a miracle. That's why when after the election of François Mitterrand, Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy called me, I was taken by surprise. I of course accepted. My roadmap was to give more rights to women at the professional level, enhance the importance of the role of women in French society, ending the notion of head of the family or enshrining in law the professional equality that made part of the famous 110 proposals of the candidate Mitterrand .
During your ministry, you have enacted no less than six laws against gender inequality. Are laws sufficient to advance society and prevent regression ?
The laws are necessary, but not sufficient, as I wrote. As proof of this, my law in favor of professional equality is still not applied. Thirty-six years after the 1983 law, significant differences persist between female and male wages. It is not enough to make laws, they must be consolidated, complete, as Simone de Beauvoir said. This is what I did with respect to the Veil law on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy , by having the social security reimbursement of abortion voted.
It was necessary to convince François Mitterrand who did not agree, I believe, on this question ...
I had the ear of President Mitterrand. He took into account my recommendations, but on this issue of reimbursement of abortion by the Secu, I actually felt that he was shocked. I understood him because he came from a bourgeois background, deeply Catholic. I explained to her that the cost of the surgery was too high for some women, who then resorted to traditional means of abortion, which put their lives at risk. The president eventually gave in and agreed that the abortion be reimbursed by Social Security. That said, abortion is still a taboo in our society where the influence of the Church is still very strong. It was when I wanted to make a contraceptive campaign in 1981 when I arrived at the ministry or when I closed the IVG reimbursement file that I felt the power of the Catholic Church.
This March 8, 2019 is an important day for you because the Belfond editions have decided to reissue your translation of the essay on women by the American feminist Betty Friedan. In what circumstances did you translate this book ?
Translator of English of formation, I translated among others the memories of Eleanor Roosevelt entitled My life . In the 1960s, I met Colette Audry, who directed the collection "Woman" at Denoël-Gonthier. We became very friends. She initiated me to theoretical thinking about feminism. Later, we signed together the " Manifesto of 343 " where we declared to have aborted. This was happening at a time when abortion was considered a crime and was punishable by death. We know the rest. It was Colette Audry who drew my attention to Betty Friedan's book. She asked me to translate it. This essay, which was very successful in the United States when it was published in 1963, is one of the founding books of contemporary American feminist thought. His title The Feminine Mystique had intrigued us a lot. " The mystique of the woman " meant nothing in French. Finally, with my editor, we have selected The Mystified Woman , in the sense of the mystifications of which the woman is still the object in patriarchal societies.
The discomfort of the bourgeois American woman, mystified perhaps by the consumer society, which is the starting point of Friedan's opus, is a thousand miles away from the questions you will have to deal with as a minister. You recognized yourself in this book ?
You know French feminism has evolved since the 1980s. The massification of university education has led to more specific claims related to the profession, the sharing of work at home, political parity. Friedan's book speaks specifically of the frustration of women who spend their lives in occupations far below their intellectual abilities. Graduates of graduate studies, reduced to the procreation and maintenance of the house as the alpha and omega of their lives, these women fall into depression and drown their frustrations in alcohol or psychotropic drugs. Is this not the condition of many women today in the West?
You come from a rather modest background. How did you become a feminist ?
By books, by meetings. I was instinctively, I think. But it is the contact with the theoretical thought that allowed me to structure my own reflection on the subject. More deeply, I think I have become a feminist because of my revolt against my father. He was not a bad man. He was registered with the SFIO, but he belonged to another age. My relationship with him was difficult because he was very machinist, authoritarian. He did not want me to go to high school, when he pushed my brothers to study. I had to find other ways to educate myself and cultivate myself. So while working as a shorthand, I took evening classes and passed the bac at 26 years old. Then I went to Glasgow where I lived for three years, before returning to the country and getting involved in politics. Simone de Beauvoir who prefaced one of my books, called me a " wrestler ", which she said would be my " dominant quality ".
What do you think of women's struggles today ?
Women who are engaged in the fight against sexual harassment as part of the #metoo movement, represent the next generation. They have managed to put the feminist struggle in the field of political struggle, pointing out abusive power relations. Feminism is an eminently political fight. Nobody understood it better than our enemies, who responded to the revelations of #metoo by the platform published in Le Monde by a collective of 100 women, that joined Catherine Deneuve. The authors of this platform endorse male domination. I am not surprised to see women take such a stand for their oppressor because it is difficult to free oneself from centuries of cultural conditioning. It is clear that not all women are feminists: if they were, the goals of feminism would have been achieved long ago.
Imagine that you are again appointed Minister of Women's Rights. What steps would you take as soon as you arrive ?
I would like to ensure that the law on professional equality, which, as I recall, dates back to 1983, is fully implemented. I would ask that the Ministry of Women's Rights be again a full ministry. I would advocate for the woman to be considered a person in her own right. All of these demands are legitimate, but as male domination remains strongly entrenched throughout the world, it will take a long time - perhaps several centuries - before the ideals of feminism become commonplace. I dream of a time when there will be no more 8-March, no more International Women's Day. This would mean that there is no more discrimination and that all citizens can exercise their full rights.
The Mystified Woman , by Betty Friedan. Translated from English by Yvette Roudy. Ed. Belfond, Paris, 2019. 560 pages, 22.50 euros.