Professional handball players have obtained a better guarantee of their rights.
Their sport has just acquired a collective agreement, a first in women's sport in France.
This major advance should in particular make life easier for players who wish to have a child.
This is a first in professional women's sport in France.
Women's handball has just adopted a collective agreement to guarantee the rights of players.
Thanks to this historic breakthrough, handball players should be able to reconcile pregnancy and competition much more easily in our country.
An approach that was very difficult until now, as the player Siraba Dembélé told Thursday on Europe 1. "When you are a high level athlete and you are pregnant, you are like a plague", she laments.
"It feels like this is very serious, that you have to be banned and that you are not going to come back. Yet I take my example, and it is actually possible."
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"That they can assume that they want to be a mother"
"The high level athlete can be a mother and come back to the activity. Me, what I want is that the high level players have a serenity compared to that, that they can assume to have the desire to be a mother and have moral support behind ", continues the captain of the French handball team who had returned to competition after her pregnancy.
She, like others before, faced stubborn prejudices and a lack of financial support.
With this collective agreement, all of this should be bad memories.
The salary of the players will now be maintained for one year instead of three months for the moment during a maternity hospital.
"I think that the players will approach their life in a more serene way"
For the vice-president of the French handball federation Béatrice Barbusse, this collective agreement is an important guarantee for the players.
"A sportswoman tended to ask herself questions a lot: 'Can I have a child now or not? When do I do it? Am I waiting for the end of my career or not? '", she reports.
"Today, these are questions they will no longer have to ask themselves in handball. And I think they will approach their life in a more serene way."
The salary maintenance will also apply in the event of a long injury.
In addition, handball players get the same amount of paid leave as their male counterparts, a total of seven weeks.
From now on, they hope to take in their wake other sports federations.
Basketball players could be the next to take the plunge.