"Are you a feminist?" She picks us up like that, Yvette Roudy, as we are about to question her about the 38th edition of International Women's Day which takes place this Sunday. If, each year, France celebrates it on March 8, it is to her that we owe it: Yvette Roudy breathed the idea to the then President of the Republic, François Mitterrand. “I am happy that the women have taken this date. Men don't always understand it. This is certainly not the time when we offer flowers… ”, she quips.
March 8 is not "a celebration" but a sting reminder of the road that remains to be done, insists the one who was the Prime Minister responsible for Women's Rights, from 1981 to 1986. Behind her famous glasses, she looks " with hindsight ”society today and has lost none of its convictions for the cause of women, its great struggle. "What do you want, I'm a perpetual rebel," she concedes, at almost 91 years old. The upcoming discussion will prove him right.
"There should be a real ministry of women's rights"
The Caesar ceremony? "I would never have given a price to Polanski!" The women who left the room did well. It is their I accuse them. »MeToo? “We are at the beginning of something, of a world in transformation. I would like this new world to be the time of women. »Violence against women, a major cause of the quinquennium? "Com 'with a capital C! There is no political will to change things. We are accommodating a secretariat of state when it would take a real ministry of women's rights, with someone volunteer at its head and who has the ear of the president. "
Author of several books including "the Woman on the margins" (Ed. Flammarion) in 1975, she presents herself today with a new committed text, "Lutter toujours" (Robert Laffont). To return to this long march of women towards equality made up of “slow progress”, of insufficiencies and threatened achievements, of course, but also to invite them to unite and reflect on the means of undertaking “this a battle that will be long ”.
For her, the women and men who support them should constitute a political party "to really weigh". "Feminism is not a current of thought, it radiates all subjects," argues Yvette Roudy. The entrance to his apartment in the 15th arrondissement of Paris sets the tone. A slightly yellowed poster displaying the major dates in the advancement of women's rights welcomes us there.
The abortion, gender equality in the company
When she came to government, after twenty years of activism within the socialist party, she took a long time to impose "Madame THE Minister". "I refused to sign protocols where I was changed sex," recalls this tutelary figure of feminism. She knows it, the devil is hiding in details that are not. It is undoubtedly the mission that belongs to pioneers like her: to recall and claim her place, including in ministerial documents.
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Signatory, in 1971, of the Manifesto of 343 in favor of the right to abortion, four years before its decriminalization in France, it is at the origin of the law of 1982 on the reimbursement of the voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) and the one on gender equality in the business world, a year later. A measure "which is still not applied", storms the nonagenarian under her white mane.
“I was very naive at the time. I thought that a law would suffice. As for abortion, it is still being fought. Me, I would have been much more imperative with regard to these doctors who put forward the conscience clause to refuse to carry it out. This must be deleted! If the women in government were truly feminist, we wouldn't be there, ”she says, scathing.
"My father was a terrible macho"
A disappointment for the one who also acted for parity in politics. In 1996, she initiated the Manifesto of the Ten in which five women on the right and five on the left united to demand this parity. The text will make the front page of L'Express. In addition to Yvette Roudy, Edith Cresson, the first woman to hold the post of Prime Minister, or Simone Veil are among the signatories. Four years later, the so-called “parity” law, which obliges political parties to present an equal number of men and women in elections, was promulgated under the Jospin government. "He took up all our arguments ... without citing us of course," she laughs.
Born in a working class environment, what made her the feminist she never stopped being? "I owe it to my father. He was a horrible macho who thought that women served men. I also owe it to meetings and luck. "
At the origin of the day of March 8
The idea germinated in Denmark, in Copenhagen. In August 1910, at the 2nd International Conference of Socialist Women, the German Clara Zetkin proposed the organization, every year, of "a day of women which will serve primarily the struggle for the right to vote of women" . This proposal was immediately adopted.
It was formalized in France, 72 years later, on the initiative of Yvette Roudy, Prime Minister for Women's Rights. “I proposed it to Mitterrand, who refused me nothing at the time. He replied: It is a good idea . I even wanted it to be a holiday like May 1st, but then he said no, ”she says. “For the event, we decided to invite 400 women to the Elysée. Never has the Palace received so many, ”remembers Yvette Roudy in her latest book,“ Lutter toujours ”(Ed. Robert Laffont). Each year, she obtains the issue of a stamp bearing the image of women who have marked the history of feminism: Clara Zetkin, Danielle Casanova, Flora Tristan, Pauline Kergomard, Louise Michel. “The return of the right to power will end our series. "
