DSK: why French women put up with it

As new claims of sexual misconduct surface, fresh questions about abuse of power and a pattern of behavior by Mr Strauss-Kahn come to the surface. One question which looms large is, why this type of abuse has been accepted by French women? Well, it seems that French women are finally speaking up.

 

According to an article reported in The Telegraph

"Why all the fuss? It's merely a bit of hanky-panky with the help," said Jean-François Kahn, the crusading editor of the Left-wing Marianne weekly. Jack Lang, a law don famous for having been François Mitterrand's high-profile, graffiti-loving, diversity-fostering Culture Minister, dismissed it all rather infelicitously as an "overblown" affair: "Really, nobody died in that hotel room."

The culture that allows French men to see female colleagues as fair game is still alive and well, says Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in Paris

Meanwhile, women started talking. Memona Hintermann, a respected television correspondent, recalled telling a couple of years back about being nearly assaulted by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi when she went to Tripoli's Presidential palace to interview him, only to be met with flippant indifference upon her return. "Well, of course, he's a seducer," she was told with knowing smirks.

Everyone suddenly had stories to tell. The actress who was ordered in a very few rude words by the legendary actor-director Jean-Louis Barrault to perform a sex act on him before he would even deign to allow her to audition for him (she walked out). The radiojournalist who, some years back, kneeling on the carpet of the Mayor of Rouen and one-time presidential hopeful, Jean Lecanuet, to plug in her Nagra recorder, found him close behind her in an expectant pose. The women political correspondents who recalled L'Express's famous editor, Françoise Giroud, advising them on how to dress and to make up in order to "make politicians talk."

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