L'histoire du féminisme et du MLF | Archive INA — Transcript

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1. 0:04In 1945, General de Gaulle granted them
2. 0:06the right to vote. This was already a
3. 0:09major step towards greater equality
4. 0:10with men. But it took more than 20
5. 0:15years to win another revolution. We
6. 0:18want
7. 0:20and she demands free and unrestricted
8. 0:22contraception and the freedom to have
9. 0:24abortions. The fight for birth control
10. 0:29led by the deputy Lucien Virt,
11. 0:30nicknamed the father of the pill,
12. 0:32resulted in a law on the liberation of
13. 0:35contraception. But the debates on the
14. 0:37subject remain memorable. The opponents
15. 0:39persisted.
16. 0:41Men would then lose the proud awareness
17. 0:43of their fertile virility and women
18. 0:45would be nothing more than objects of
19. 0:47sterile pleasure.
20. 0:48The deputy himself had pleaded the
21. 0:49cause of women to General de Gaulle. I
22. 0:51told him, my general, at the liberation
23. 0:54, you gave women the right to vote. You
24. 0:56were right, they had earned it during
25. 0:58the resistance and you did well to give
26. 0:59them this right to vote. Well, now the
27. 1:01time has come to give them the right to
28. 1:04control their fertility because it is
29. 1:06their fertility.
30. 1:08Today, 2 million women use this
31. 1:10contraceptive, but the church still
32. 1:13forbids it. In 1968, Woman Sleep, a
33. 1:15women's liberation movement that began
34. 1:18in the United States, found followers
35. 1:20in France. It marched and took to the
36. 1:24barricades. It demanded that the pill
37. 1:26be reimbursed by social security and
38. 1:28that abortion be allowed.
39. 1:33The pill was sold over the counter and
40. 1:35family planning centers were
41. 1:36multiplying. But abortion was still
42. 1:38punishable by assizes and even the
43. 1:40death penalty. The feminist activists
44. 1:44of 1971 called first and foremost for a
45. 1:47happy sexuality free from distressing
46. 1:49material problems, and they demanded
47. 1:52free contraception and the freedom to
48. 1:55have abortions.
49. 1:57And the Bobini trial remains exemplary.
50. 1:59This 15-year-old girl tried for
51. 2:01abortion was acquitted. In support of
52. 2:04her, 343 women publicly admitted to
53. 2:06having had an abortion,
54. 2:09out of 284. It was not until 1975 and
55. 2:14the tenacity of one woman, Simon Veille
56. 2:16, that voluntary termination of
57. 2:18pregnancy became the subject of a law.
58. 2:21And that it ultimately brought progress
59. 2:23in terms of justice for women and in
60. 2:26the sense that it put an end to a
61. 2:28situation that everyone, including the
62. 2:31President of the Republic, described as
63. 2:34a mess. 1983, law on professional
64. 2:37equality for equal work, equal pay for
65. 2:39men and women. Year after year, the
66. 2:42bastions reserved for men fell.
67. 2:45Polytechnique Anne Chopinet, the
68. 2:46Académie française, Marguerite
69. 2:48Hursenard, the Court of Cassation
70. 2:50Simone Ros. But for women, nothing was
71. 2:53won. For equal work, they were
72. 2:56sometimes paid 10%less than men. In
73. 2:591998, no woman headed the top 200
74. 3:02French companies. In politics, there
75. 3:05are still relatively few women. There
76. 3:07have even been attempts to introduce
77. 3:09quotas. In 1974, François Girou headed
78. 3:12the first Secretary of State for Women.
79. 3:15In 1991, Eddie Crresson moved to
80. 3:17Matignon amidst the Mise au génie.
81. 3:20However, according to a recent poll,
82. 3:22the French are now ready to elect a
83. 3:23woman to lead the country.