Several hundred people, the vast majority of them women, demonstrated on Saturday in Nice, Lille and Strasbourg, as a preamble to International Women's Day on March 8.
In Nice, the mobilization had been authorized despite the confinement of the city during the weekend.
Behind a banner "Against sexist and sexual violence", the procession set off in the early afternoon from the city center, under the sun, to the song of "We are strong, we are proud, radical feminists and angry ".
"We will be a feminist as long as it is necessary and today it is more necessary than ever", explains Kim, 38, who does not wish to give her name. Holding a sign "Tremble patriarchate", the thirty-something says she wants to denounce "a organized system which kills ”and evokes the women killed by the blows of a man.
In 2020, 90 women were killed by their spouses and ex-spouses, against 146 femicides recorded by the government in 2019.
"The mental load is almost always carried by women"
"We are fighting so that there is less inequality between men and women at work, for example, but also against sexual harassment in the workplace or in everyday life", explains Alexia Dominey, 26 years, coordinator of the collective "Nous All" of the Alpes-Maritimes.
According to the European statistics body Eurostat, "women are paid, on average, 14.1% less than men" in the EU (figure from 2018).
"The mental load is almost always carried by women", also points out the young woman.
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In Strasbourg, the demonstration was organized by several collectives, in particular the Witch Bloc and Super Momes, which had called for a march "in mixed gender", closed to "cisgender men" (born and defining themselves as men).
Several men have also been dismissed by the female security service of the mobilization. "We are not born a woman, but we die of it", "More chicks, less cops", or "Le Patricarcat au feu, Darmanin in the middle, "proclaimed the placards brandished by the demonstrators, who chanted" A rapist inside, an accomplice in Justice ".
"We are mobilized today to say that the figures of violence against women are not falling, and that the public authorities are not doing their job," says Emilie, 31, member of the collective "We All".
“There are about 200 women victims of rape every day in France.
If we had 200 bakers victims of attacks every day, the public authorities would be on the front line, ”she believes.
A symbolic world day
Within the procession, nearly a third of the demonstrators were activists of the Kurdish Women's Movement.
Meryem Tekiner, their spokesperson, called for “the union of women around the world, for freedom and against fascism”.
In Lille, the march, organized by the "Collectif 8 mars", bringing together feminist associations, brought together between 800 and 900 demonstrators, according to the estimate of the prefecture.
Among their demands were the "end of impunity for gender-based and sexual violence, and incest" and "PMA for all".
March 8 has been celebrated for over a century around the world, a day that symbolizes struggles and demands for women's rights, against sexism and inequalities against men.
