INTERVIEW Marlene Schiappa: There is a presumption of incompetence, discrimination against women in the workplace

There is generally a "presumption of incompetence" plaguing women in the workplace, a negative discrimination that follows them in their professional career that should disappear, Marlene Schiappa, French minister of state for gender equality, told AGERPRES in an interview on Thursday. 

Schiappa attended a two-day Conference of Francophone Women in Bucharest that ends on Thursday. The French official has sponsored a piece of legislation designed to combat against harassment of women and violence against women and criminalise them. She also works for the real application of equal pay for men and women in the workplace. 

According to the French official, there is currently a "presumption of competence" working in favour of men at the level of society at work, while women are subject to "a presumption of incompetence," and rather being first scanned for physical appearance and personal life. 

"With regard to women, I think their struggle must be against this form of, let's say, minimisation, hesitation. It is harder for a woman to get the attitude 'I am excellent, I am competent, I deserve a higher position, a better wage.' It's harder for women to think so, they have not been used to such attitude, they were not raised in the culture of risk," said Schiappa. 

AGERPRES: You have initiated a piece of legislation in your country that criminalises street harassment of women and gender-based violence. What can you say about this bill in more details? I mean in particular the idea of harassment, which is hard to demonstrate and define. 

Marlene Schiappa: Yes, we are working on a law that has many purposes, including combating sexist violence and sexual violence, staring with verbal harassment in the streets. Police and the law enforcement forces to be mobilised by the Interior Ministry, can legally define street harassment. The difficult part is to describe in law what this harassment in the streets, in the public space, means. Five lawmakers from all the political groups are working on this definition, and on the basis of it we can address the problem of harassment in the public space. 

AGERPRES: You are also tackling gender equality in terms of pay for men and women. It is a problem that affects multiple layers. There are even Hollywood actresses having complained about having dramatically lower salaries than their male colleagues. How do you handle the problem? 

Marlene Schiappa: Speaking of this issue of equal pay, we can say that the gender pay gap is 12 percent to 27 percent. In 9 percent of the cases there is no explanation for the pay differences. Simply the pay gap has no justification. Nobody knows how to explain why this happens. It is not about maternity leave, or the fact that women and men work in different departments. There are differences between the wages of a man and a woman who have exactly the same job and those differences cannot be explained. 

We are working on this subject with companies to engage them in this endeavour, and also to start a "name and shame" movement - if a woman has such an experience she should make it public, she should disclose the name of the companies that do not meet the legal obligations. 

AGERPRES: Is there pressure from companies on this initiative to equalise women's and men's wages? 

Marlene Schiappa: Companies do not want to be part of this campaign to denounce that they are not observing the law. As soon as we have created this "name and shame" practice, there were companies that protested, but that did not stop us. We need to be aware that for about 30 years there have been laws in France speaking of gender equality in terms of wages, but the law is not fully enforced. The law is a first step. We must not let things pass; we must enforce the law, including coercive measures when necessary. In this regard, we have proposed random inspections of companies and fining them in the event of non-compliance with the law. 

AGERPRES: Do you have figures describing both discrimination against women and violence against women? 

Marlene Schiappa: Yes, we have official figures showing that in France there are 84,000 rapes a year and about 150,000 sexual assaults. But these are calculation methods that do not show the true number, given that this phenomenon is very difficult to quantify. Most women do not talk about what has happened to them. Of the vast majority of sexual violence we will never know anything, because women live them, but then they do not report it or call an association for victim support. These are just estimates. We are deploying efforts to reduce those figures, which remain the same every year. 


AGERPRES: Since you talk very much about discrimination, can you give discrimination examples from your own experience? You are a female politician, but you were a blogger first. How have you been discriminated against, in this context? 

Marlene Schiappa: I have had an evolution that is not typical. I have benefited from much support in my professional career, I was lucky. I noticed that when I worked as a journalist, when I was writing economics articles on the blog, I had comments such as 'oh, it is written by a girl, she is young,' they commented on my photo, if they liked it or not. They weren't talking about the content itself. Briefly, they questioned my legitimacy. At some point, I decided to sign with a male name. I signed various articles with male names. At that moment, people didn't doubt my competence; they strictly focused on the analyses in the articles. They weren't making comments about my age, about the way I look; they weren't trying to send me private messages. They started from the principle that the person signing [the article] is competent. Therefore, we can talk about the fact that, in the case of men, there is a presumption of competence. If you are a man, you are definitely competent, if you are a woman, you are definitely incompetent. There is a presumption of incompetence. It is a very strong form of negative discrimination, a discrimination against women in the workplace. 

AGERPRES: In the political world, can you tell what are you criticised for in terms of being a woman? 

Marlene Schiappa: There are not many sexist criticisms coming from my colleagues in politics. However, earlier, I was a deputy mayor in a city. At that moment there hadn't been any sexist comments from colleagues either, but rather from the press. The articles about me were rather about my hair style, about my make-up, about the nail polish I was wearing, about clothes. One realises that, as a woman, one is firstly judged for appearance. Once scanned according to this criterion, there may be some interest in what you have to say. But first you are judged according to personal looks and private life - if you care for children or not, if you are a mother, and what your civil status is. Are you a trustworthy woman or are there question marks over your private life? It is a very sexist scanning for all women who have public appearances and for all working women, in general. 

AGERPRES: What can men and women do to fight against gender discrimination? 

Marlene Schiappa: I believe there is currently a personal battle. We must fight against our own stereotypes. We all have stereotypes, cliches. When we see people for the first time, we have an almost surveillance mechanism. We analyse them and put them into several categories: he is a man, he must do this, she is a woman, she must do this. I believe that, in the first place, the fight is against us, against our own cliches and stereotypes. With regard to women, I think their struggle must be against this form of, let's say, minimisation, hesitation. It is harder for a woman to get the attitude 'I am excellent, I am competent, I deserve a higher position, a better wage.' It's harder for women to think so, they have not been used to such attitude, they were not raised in the culture of risk. Women must overcome themselves; dare assert themselves, as the title of the conference in Bucharest also says. 

AGERPRES: You are the creator of the "Maman Travaille" (Mother Works) network, therefore you also speak of women as mothers. What is your approach of equal pay for men and women in the context in which women sometimes have this second role, of mothers? 

Marlene Schiappa: There are mechanisms which I call "the mother ceiling," which put the brakes on the career of women for reasons related to their potential of becoming a mother. I want to say that, when women go to a job interview, they are regarded from the start as 'risky' candidates, no matter if they are pregnant, have children or not. Companies believe they are taking a chance hiring women - they will have children, the children will get sick, they'll take days off. Even if at present she doesn't have kids, some day she may have, therefore the employer takes up a risk - the risk for the woman to have children while under contract with them. 

The fact that maternity - be it about women who have or women who don't have children - is a factor of negative discrimination must be overcome. Moreover, women who don't have children at a certain age are generally regarded with suspicion. They are told: "How come you don't have children? It is weird." This is a form of judging the status of a woman depending on her being a mother or not. This is undoubtedly a negative element. 

AGERPRES: What do you believe are the highest obstacles to implementing the policies regarding the equality of chances between men and women? 

Marlene Schiappa: The highest obstacle is what the French sociologists call the myth that this equality already exists. Namely, the premise that we are already equal. For instance, it is to be presumed that if you are a woman journalist, I am a woman politician, this chance for women exists everywhere and there is no problem. In reality, we are part of a minority, we are few. For a short time, women have earned the right to have jobs like yours or mine. I believe this is the great danger. There are very many things to be done in each country, in Europe, as well as worldwide, in general. There are still girls who don't go to school because they are girls, girls who die because they are girls, women battered because they are women, raped because they are women, paid less by an employer because they are women and who, in the end, have a more complicate life than men, and this is unacceptable.