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On November 2, 1992, the French Parliament unanimously approved a law criminalizing sexual harassment for the first time. This law – which applies to the workplace, public spaces and the internet – continues to evolve to better identify situations and protect victims.
For several days now, French female pilots have expressed their grief over the harassment they have endured over the years in the form of offensive images, threats and insults . Video creator Maghla, known for his video game live on Twitch, posted a long series of tweets he illustrated, using photographs and photographic images, images that were not created for him.
Harassing a woman in France, whether online, in public or at work, is a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of €45,000. The precise definition of torture has been enshrined in French law since November 2, 1992 but has been evolving over the past 30 years to eliminate legal ambiguities.
Hierarchical relationship
“The activists of the European Association against Violence against Women at Work (AVFT) put the harassment in the political movement in the 1980s and 1990s. They helped the victims to make the first complaints,” e says Françoise Picq, feminist historian and vice president of the National Association of Feminist Studies (Anef).
The concept of harassment was first introduced into French criminal law on 22 July 1992 and was defined as: “the act of harassing another person by means of orders or threats , or restrictions and seeking to obtain the benefits of a sexual nature”.
Picq emphasized that the law applies to harassment by employers at work. “At that time, French feminists did not want to follow the example of the US: There, it was customary not to allow female students to be alone in the professor’s office ,” says the historian. “But in France, the goal is above all to punish people who have committed abuses in the context of a hierarchical relationship at work.”
Redefining words
In 1998, the words “high pressure” were added to the text. Later, in 2002, the definition was expanded to include “harming another person with the aim of obtaining benefits of a sexual nature”. Now suicides of any kind, whether committed by co-workers, strangers on the street, or cybercriminals, are considered crimes.
The aim is to align the definition of discrimination with that of personal discrimination, which was introduced into French law in 2002. Unlike discrimination, moral discrimination refers to a working relationship.
There is a legal gap
The actions of May 2012 shocked the country when the Legislative Council repealed the article of the Law Code on harassment, because the definition was vague and therefore illegal. For several months, the victims of the abuse were left out of the law.
“We had a big problem with the criminal law at that time, and none of the measures that were being taken were successful,” said Nathalie Leroy, a lawyer for labor laws and an investigator at the HER, an agency that specializes to cases of sexual harassment and sexual harassment at the university. workplace. He added: “Some of the people who were accused of the crime, the definition of which was considered very light, were judged.
On August 6, 2012, the new law on post-election harassment was announced in an emergency session. The text provided a new definition of blackmail, which defined dangerous situations and strengthened the associated punishments.
The criminal definition grew in 2018, with a new version stating that sexual harassment is “the fact of repeatedly perpetrating a person’s speech or behavior that follows a sexual pattern , or gender”.
At work
Although it is difficult to identify suicidal acts in the workplace, “one should consider the nature of the acts, their frequency, their impact on the victim, whether or the target of a villain”, says Leroy. “Today, it is accepted that the behavior is moral, it does not mean that the behavior is clear and correct.”
The French Employment Code is now linked to the French Holiday Code. As of March 31, 2022, “you’re in a situation of harassment at work if the first person says a gendered statement, such as ‘There’s a man on the balcony’ [a French expression meaning buxom] and someone else will follow up with a comment like ‘Yes, the way you dress…’ Before this article is taken down, the same person should repeat the same thing about the woman. This is not the case.”
Between 2017 and 2019, a study conducted by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on 4.5 million French workers showed that 52 percent of women have suffered from harassment at work. For men, the figure is 27 percent. Only 4 percent of these women filed complaints and 1 percent of men.
According to the lawyer, “prevention is the key”. The Labor Code states that the employer must take steps to prevent, prevent and punish discrimination. If they do not meet this obligation, “they will be prosecuted before the industrial tribunal for damages”.
In public places
But how to prevent stress outside of work?
The online platform Twitch, which has been making headlines after a wave of sexual accusations against its female streamers, strengthened its policy in January 2021. Harassment, banned on database but did not provide an explanation, which is now defined as repetitive, offensive, or explicit comments about physical or sexual characteristics, posting nude photos or videos, and some away. Prohibition is not enough to protect videographers.
And in public places? According to Picq’s wife, the #MeToo movement in 2017 “really changed the level of tolerance shown to behaviors that fall under the category of sexual harassment ” in public places. But victims don’t file complaints because of lack of evidence or fear of consequences. “My generation didn’t want to always appeal to the power of the government, and we couldn’t. Today, there are many legal tools available to help us.”
The last one, the “Schiappa” law, named after the former minister for gender equality of France, Marlene Schiappa, was introduced in 2018, because the discrimination of the women to mouth a crime in an effort to reduce the so-called “street abuse”, according to Picq. Four years after its introduction, the law is showing its limits. From 2020-2021, the security services recorded 3,700 cases of discrimination against women in France. In fact, this figure is higher because 81 percent of women in France have been affected by sexual harassment in public, according to an Ipsos survey published in July 2020.
This article was translated from the original into French.
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