"Often media managers have asked me: Do you feel capable of it? Implied: because you are a woman... I was more capable of it than them!", Laughs Françoise Huguier, strong in 50 years of career and a 1993 World Press Photo for his logbook of a solo trip to Siberia.

In 2021, women still represented only 19% of applications for this prestigious prize.

More numerous in the field, they remain a minority (a quarter to a third of photographers in France according to surveys) for often precarious income.

"The guys should take care of the children", underlines Françoise Huguier.

"I saw many of my friends give up the job when they had children. I didn't have any," she told AFP at the Visa pour l'image festival. in Perpignan.

She presents "All in withdrawal", a retrospective of her forays behind the scenes of the world, from Mali to Russia, from Seoul to Durban, from haute couture to slums.

Reconciling work and parenthood is only one of the obstacles for women towards recognition, with the male interpersonality of editorial staff and prize juries, according to the Observatory of Mixity of the association Les filles de la Photo.

Fight for your curiosity

This year, they are eight women out of 25 exhibited at Visa, a major photojournalism festival.

Françoise Huguier, the dean, believes "to have been lucky" to break into the 70s at a time "when it was more complicated, not accepted as today".

At 80, she does not intend to stop, especially as independent, she only receives 700 euros in retirement.

His weapon?

"When I have something in mind, I don't let go. I'm stubborn! You have to follow your curiosity, if you want to do a subject, you have to fight".

Visa's youngest child, Tamara Saade, 25, is on the same page.

"It's a question of character, more than of gender or sex," adds this Lebanese woman, whose exhibition "Without respite" bears witness to the crisis since the catastrophic explosion of 2020 in Beirut.

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"There have always been women photographers, but we have highlighted men more," she laments, citing the "inspiring and incredible" Myriam Boulos, Tania Habjouqa, Randa Shaath, "all these women we find out by being a little more curious".

"Female photojournalists aren't hidden. We're not a rare breed! We just don't get contacted by the media."

Solidarity is one of the means advocated by her Venezuelan colleague Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen, 33.

The strength of the collective

"We are still very far from parity. However, in Latin America, there are collectives that unite women (...) We organize ourselves to have our work published, we learn from each other (...) The secret is to join forces to fight," she advises.

If Tamara Saade thinks before going out alone at night in certain places, she would like "not to have to think about it. These questions a man does not ask himself."

And she denounces the persistence of "micro aggressions": "I am entitled to comments that my male colleagues do not receive (...) No one is going to try to play with their camera while joking".

But does a woman have easier access to intimacy?

Françoise Huguier, even admitted to convents in Colombia, highlights "attitude, responsibility".

"You have to respect people, take the time. If you're too direct, it doesn't work."

An opinion shared by Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen, who exhibits "Dias eternos: Venezuela, Salvador et Guatemala (2017-2022)", or these "endless days" in unsanitary and overcrowded women's prisons.

"I could only reach the level of intimacy I was looking for by working with women (...) But telling the situation of women is also telling that of men who suffer the same," she says, believing that a "gender vision" does not prevent showing the reality of both.

© 2022 AFP