Élisabeth Moreno often quotes the famous lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, when we meet her at the Hôtel du petit Monaco where her ministry is located.
It is therefore not surprising that the Minister responsible for Equality ranks this passionate defender of the cause of women on the podium of these sources of inspiration.
Gisèle Halimi is also a mirror: like her, from modest origins;
like her, a path led by the strength of an unwavering will;
like her, a family environment where women had well-defined roles and against which we had to fight ... On this International Women's Rights Day, Élisabeth Moreno agreed for Le Parisien to write a letter to her role model, disappeared in July 2020. A letter is also the tool of the government campaign of “1000 Possibles” on the occasion of March 8.
About 1,000 girls are born in our country every day.
Those who will be born this Monday will receive a letter from 60 inspiring women (like Apple, the singer or Catherine Guillouard, president of the RATP group), telling them that everything is possible for them.
Marlène Schiappa's letter to the "Mariannes"
Laurence Rossignol's letter to Mr. Seguin's goat
Letter to Gisèle Halimi by Élisabeth Moreno, Minister responsible for Equality between Women and Men, Diversity and Equal Opportunities.
Dear Gisèle Halimi,
Feminist, you were from a young age.
At the age of ten, you go on a hunger strike so you don't have to make your brother's bed anymore.
Tired of so much stubbornness, your parents finally give in.
In the evening, you then jot down in your diary what, without knowing it, will constitute the common thread of your life: "
Today, I won my first little piece of freedom
".
Six years later, you will oppose your parents again by refusing an arranged marriage with a thirty-five year old man.
Tenacity, already.
You may not have known it then, but you had just won your first feminist fights.
These teenage fights were in reality the prologue to the struggles that you will lead all your life so that all women can gain "
their little piece of freedom
".
Your life has been a permanent commitment.
Your destiny - exceptional - has been forged in the wake of your battles, to the point of being confused with it.
Stubbornness, always.
The revolt arose very early in you.
How many times have you shouted at your parents with your childish voice: “
This is not fair
!
".
You did not "choose" the feminist struggle, it came to you.
And this fight came to life in this "
it's not fair
!"
Contagious that you will not stop hammering for your life.
This fight, you had to embrace it very early to save yourself and get out of the shackles in which your family wanted to lock you.
“
We are not born a feminist, we become it
”, you say at the conclusion of your last interview book with Annick Cojean.
An assertion that resonates with me acutely.
If you inspire me so much, it's because I too had to fight against a fate that had been written for me in advance.
Like you, I refused the injunctions and diktats, and in the end nothing went as planned.
You have conquered your freedom to then serve that of others.
Ultimately, faced with the injustices of our world, which you have felt and experienced prematurely, you have always chosen "the camp of the victims".
One day, when you were still only a trainee lawyer, you jumped up to a magistrate and declared to him: "
the injustice is physically intolerable to me
".
This feeling will surface in all your struggles, in all your pleadings and in all your writings.
With that buried anger that was never far away.
Anger never satiated, always on edge.
Because you felt it in the depths of your flesh, the fight against injustice was therefore the great business of your life.
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Becoming a lawyer was then obvious.
A job that I myself dreamed of doing when I was young to save the widow and the orphan.
But then as a teenager, I came up against the stereotypes that assign: "A CAP is better for you".
" It's not fair !
".
For you, dear Gisèle, this profession was a vocation.
A vocation espoused with an almost mystical commitment and the naivety of those who aspire to change the world, convinced that liberation can spring from oppression.
Because perpetuating things often causes less clashes than wanting to change them, you decided very early on to upset the established order.
From the family revolt was therefore born the political revolt.
Passionate defender, obstinate watchman, tireless activist, you have used all possible means for women to be free: the law, literature and political engagement.
Your battles unfortunately remain contemporary.
If our society has evolved since the Bobigny trial, if women have gained in freedom and dignity since the "manifesto of 343 sluts", the stakes are still legion.
To honor the memory of the one who has never released her life from her commitments, we must continue to act.
And for the sublime pages that you wrote in the History of France in the ink of its struggles, struggles that have made our society progress, I plead for you to enter the Pantheon.
To great women the grateful homeland.
