If you’re enjoying your morning coffee and croissant, like me, take a few minutes to watch this New York Times video about women in France, in which Katrinn Bennhold reports that: “France may look Scandinavian in terms of its employment and birthrate statistics, but when it comes to attitude this is still very much a Latin country.”
Even though French women have more college degrees than French men and benefits that make this American woman faint with envy—a monthly per-child government allowance, free nursery school and health care, generous maternity leave—their glass ceiling is proving surprisingly shatterproof. Bennhold, and the women she spoke with, attribute this to persistent cultural and political apathy towards sexism. Some of the issues mentioned are unsurprising—the “second shift” is a apparently a trans-cultural phenomenon—but there were some eye-openers for me, like the high rate of women’s employment (82% of 25-49 year old French women work, contrasted with about 59% of US women) and fact that political parties are actually fined when women are underrepresented as candidates.
I hadn’t heard of the other benefit the accompanying article addressed: free postpartum physical therapy/exercise classes, to rebuild abdominal and pelvic floor muscles. At first I was all “wow, great attention to the mothers’ recovery,” but then I thought, “hmm, so they can get back to the image of a chic, slender French woman, and have more sex and thus more babies.” France is a leader in Western Europe with its birthrate and the government seems to want to maintain that status. My cynical side wonders if some of that is tied up with the country’s immigration/assimilation “problems” and some of the recent pigheaded bigotedness, but that’s veering off-topic.
From this I deduce that France has a long way to go towards equally shared parenting being the norm (compared to Sweden). But of course, so do we. I wonder what percentage of French women are mothers, and how that differs from the U.S. Do women make different choices knowing there is a strong safety net in place? Even knowing that the choice to have a child will likely be detrimental to their careers?
Maybe the sequel to that silly “French Women Don’t Get Fat” book should be “French Women Don’t Get Ahead.” Though I don’t see that becoming a bestseller in this country.
@ShinyObjects: Do women make different choices knowing there is a strong safety net in place?
That does seem to be the case. Pretty much every study I’ve ever seen on the birth rates in Western Europe shows that when women have a solid safety net, they are more likely to have multiple children, even if, as you point out, they’ll have a tougher time at work. It may be that the positive (the safety net) and the negative (tougher workplace) cancel each other out in terms of cost-benefit analysis, which is still preferable to societies where childbearing is objectively a lose-lose proposition.
Honestly, if I could get just one or two of those benefits, I’d be thrilled. Even the post-partum exercise classes. I wouldn’t look any of those gift horses in the mouth.
As for your cynical thoughts about it being an anti-immigrant, have-more-white-babies campaign—I wondered that too. But I assume maternal benefits are extended to all French women, regardless of ethnicity. Whether they can fully utilize them or if they’re the same quality for WOC in non-white communities is the question. I’d be curious to see data on that.
I just left France after living there for a year and think this is spot on. French women do have amazing benefits – the school provision is excellent and it is completely acceptable to work after having a baby.
But culturally, sexism is still a massive problem in France – much more than anywhere else I’ve lived. As a woman, you constantly get comments about your looks, wolf whistles, etc. on the street, which is something that never happened to me to nearly the same extent anywhere else. I think the pressure to live up to ideals of femininity in appearance and behavior (not being too aggressive, etc.) is much greater than in the US, UK or Germany.
@ShinyObjects: My impression is that the safety net does help. And I don’t think having children is more detrimental to French women’s careers than to German, American or British women’s careers.
They’ve had all kinds of discussion in the German media about how to improve their birthrate and it usually comes down to needing better preschool provision and a change in cultural attitudes that a) make employers unwilling to hire young mothers and b) mean that a lot of women, particularly in the West and in rural areas, are still judged as ‘Rabenmütter’ (bad mothers) if they work instead of devoting themselves to their children. They still haven’t got their act together and actually, you know, fixed the problem though.
I work in France and see and hear about this sexism day in and day out. There’s even a website devoted to short, personal accounts of the sexism women here face at work. The glass ceiling is impenetrable and the sexism is culturally engrained. While it is wonderful to know that your job will be waiting for you when you want to go back (after having a baby), the chances of ever getting promoted are slim. It’s illegal to ask about family and if you want children, but it’s still something that is discreetly hinted at during the interviews. Women who have already had their children have a better chance getting a job than women who are just about to start a family *because* of the safety nets. A minor example of sexism that I hear daily is how women are still referred to as “girls” in the workplace. When I express frustration at this, stating that we are women, people look shocked and think I’m easily offended. And yet they never, ever refer to men as “boys.” That would be silly! Many women I meet have no problem with it, seeing as it’s so common they don’t think there’s any disrespect involved.