Paris (AFP)

The government will spend more than one billion euros in 2020 on equality between women and men, a doubling compared to 2019, said Marlene Schiappa in an interview published Sunday by La Voix du Nord.

€ 544 million in commitment authorizations for gender equality in 2019, according to a figure from a transversal policy document annexed to the budget, taken over by the State Secretary in charge of the Equality between women and men

"In 2020, 1.116 billion will be invested in this cross-cutting policy," she says, without detailing these credits fed by several departments.

Asked by AFP, the entourage of the Secretary of State was "not able" Sunday to provide clarification because "this information is under the direction of the Budget.

"The figure may even be higher" thanks to the contribution of the Ministry of the Interior, which will be "very strong growth" in 2020, it added the same source.

The interministerial envelope dedicated to gender equality devotes only part of its funding to the fight against domestic violence.

Thus, for 2019, out of an initial total budget of 530 million euros, only 79 million were earmarked for actions against violence against women, according to a report by five organizations based on the analysis of the cross-cutting policy document. A figure that was considered incomplete by the State Secretariat.

The "minimum financial need for quality care of female victims of domestic violence" alone would be about "506 million euros", on the lowest assumption, and "1.1 billion" , in the highest case, considered in their report the five organizations - the Economic and Social Economic Council, the High Council for Equality, the Women's Foundation, the Women's Fund for the Mediterranean and Women's Worldwide Web.

Schiappa says she does not make a distinction between the "fight for equality and the fight against violence against women" because "everything is connected". "This violence is proliferating on a system where abusive or violent men hold women victims by links of economic interdependence or power," she says in her interview with La Voix du Nord.

At the beginning of July, she had swept a controversy over the financial means dedicated to the fight against domestic violence. "If we make a check for a billion and feminicides stop, we do it immediately," she said.

© 2019 AFP