This Isn't Your Typical Travel Guide
Photo by Eugene Delacroix
For my module, I chose to return to Paris, France, to experience “The Good Life” with Dr. Hendricks and some of my best friends. Besides a few hiccups, the entire trip was amazing, but I couldn’t help but feel some guilt about going so soon after a traumatic event transpired in our country once again. Occurring just eight days before the trip began, POLITICO reporters published a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Alito that would reverse Roe v. Wade 1973 (POLITICO). This event is entirely unprecedented. Never has an entire draft opinion been leaked. As soon as the Court makes its official ruling on the decision this summer, ‘trigger laws’ banning or restricting abortion held by pro-life states will go into effect. Texas governor, Greg Abbott, signed an abortion ban into law while I was touring the Dior museum (which I highly recommend visiting, by the way). But in most of Europe, abortion is legalized healthcare. In France, legalized abortion was recently extended from twelve weeks to fourteen weeks (The Guardian).
All of these new developments made me think, how does the quality of life for French women compare to the quality of life for American women? To measure this, I asked myself three basic questions and answered them based on outside research and my observations during the trip.
1. Are French women represented in politics?
2. Do women maintain more bodily autonomy in France than in America?
3. Are French women respected and treated equally in everyday life? If so, which women?
Disclaimer: All of my observations focused on Parisian women specifically.
Politics
According to UN Data, the U.S. gender inequality index, which is a percentage representing the potential for human development lost as a result of gender inequality, is 0.182 (18.2%) and ranks number 42 out of 189 countries. In comparison, France’s gender inequality index is 0.051 (5.1%) and ranks 8 out of 189 countries. As of 2021, women in the U.S. only make up 27% of Congress and 31% of state legislators. As of 2018, 35.7% of the French Parliament, whose members are selected to serve five-year terms, is made up of women. Neither of these are exceptional statistics concerning gender representation, considering that over half of both countries’ population consists of women.
Like the U.S., France did not always allow women to participate in politics freely. In fact, I learned at the Conciérgerie that there was a time when women could be executed for doing so. For example, Marie-Jeanne ‘Manon’ Roland de la Platiere, also referred to as Madame Roland, was a political writer and activist who was conspired against and later executed after being jailed in the Conciérgerie. This was the same prison where Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned just days before her execution. Madame Roland was an influential figure during the first French Revolution in 1789 and a supporter of the republican Girondins faction of the bourgeoisie.
As one of the first woman politicians, Madame Roland had control over the ministerial letters, speeches, and memorandums and was occasionally consulted about political decisions.
Bodily Autonomy
Following the Revolution of 1789 came the July Revolution of 1830, during which Eugène Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People. This is one of my all-time favorite paintings, currently hanging in the Louvre. I saw this painting for the first time three years ago while studying the French Revolution. It has remained significant to me because it is one of the few paintings depicting a woman as a fierce military leader. Classical art typically depicts women as passive characters of leisure, often shown nude, but in this painting, Liberty, the woman in the forefront, takes an active role. She is leading a crowd of middle and working-class revolutionaries to freedom from the oppressive rule of King Charles X. Although Liberty is said to be a great symbol of political freedom, her body is still the main topic of conversation because her naked breasts are on display, as well as her armpit hair which was considered too radical to show at the time it was painted. The “controversial” armpit hair is a reminder of how frequently society overlooks a woman’s contributions and character, instead preferring to fixate on her body. Today in America, this fixation has extended to compromising women’s reproductive rights and endangering many lives and communities. By contrast, according to Human Rights Watch, France expanded reproductive rights by permitting medication abortions for up to seven weeks through telemedicine in February. To support mothers, France also allows both parents paid parental leave — a policy America has yet to make any progress on despite the increase in abortion bans.
Everyday Life
On day two of the trip, we relaxed in the gardens of the Palais du Luxembourg. After her husband's assassination, the residence was built as an oasis for Queen Marie de Medici. While strolling through the garden, I noticed the hedges were lined with exclusively female statues all the way around, each of them representing royals, saints, or celebrities. How unique the feeling was to be immersed in an environment celebrating womanhood throughout history. Looking around the garden, I also noticed a woman breastfeeding her baby as people passed by her. She did so as if it were the most natural thing in the world— and it is. But, based on personal experience, if she had been in America, she would have been the target of harassment or public scrutiny.
But just like in the U.S., not everyone benefits from celebrating womanhood or gender parity. Historically, white women have benefited from gender parity far more than nonwhite women, including on June 2, 2020, when a protest against racism and police brutality was held outside the Paris courthouse. Although France claims to have a universalist mentality that “does not see race,” the country is still affected by its racist past as a colonial power which greatly perpetuated the slave trade.
The country is still not as inclusive as it claims to be. For example, in 2017, the Paris mayor threatened to ban a Black feminist festival hosting workshops for Black women; this is just a singular instance among many others where these spaces for minority communities were threatened. Additionally, in 2021 France’s government banned the hijab worn by Muslim children and their mothers who accompany them on school trips, causing women and children who wear the hijab to suffer from violence, harassment, and discrimination. In 2022, France’s senate voted to ban wearing the hijab in sports competitions. Furthermore, since the start of the pandemic, French Asians have suffered from a significant increase in violence, discrimination, and harassment from those who blame them for the COVID-19 virus.
Moreover, on the topic of gender-based violence, a 2019 French Institute of Public Opinion survey showed that 30% of women polled experienced sexual harassment or assault in the workplace. My friends and I experienced catcalling while walking to a café, and some of them were groped on the metro.
Conclusion
What I found by asking which country promotes more gender equality is that there’s no clear answer. Some women may benefit from a better quality of life in France in some areas, but there is still much to accomplish for both countries to achieve true gender equality, that includes nonwhite women. The same issues women face in the U.S. are the same issues French women face, but there are differences regarding reproductive rights.
