Speech by Franck Riester, Minister of Culture, on the occasion of the Ministerial Committee for Gender Equality in Culture and Communication, on Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Madam Member,

Senator:

Dear Councillor,

Presidents,

Dear Directors,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Dear friends, dear friends,

I greet in your numerous and remarkable presence the diversity of the fields and professions you represent.

This Ministerial Committee “Equality” of which you have accepted to be members, is a specificity of the Ministry of Culture, of which I am proud. Its annual session is a highlight of the importance I attach to this crucial issue of equality between women and men, a major cause of the five-year term.

The richness of the views generated by the composition of the Committee was further accentuated by the presence of new personalities, whom I greet and who are sitting for the first time: I wanted to broaden our view to new sectors of activity and new professions, because equality between women and men is imperative everywhere and immediately.

Why did I want to meet with you this morning and discuss the Equality roadmap 2019-2022?

Because this document, which obliges us, recalls the progress that has been made over the past year but above all sets out the path to follow in the coming months and describes the progress I want to see made. It must be shared, enriched, challenged perhaps!

I will not dwell on the results: I will simply recall some of the significant advances.

17 public institutions under the supervision of the ministry have obtained the AFNOR "Diversity" label and 10 of them have also acquired the "Equality" label. And this year will see the return of auditors to the Ministry and public institutions who will check, at mid-term, whether the commitments made are respected.

Regarding positions of responsibility: In 2018, the Ministry of Culture met its obligations regarding the appointment of women, in headquarters, in DRAC.

Ambitious targets have been set for the 2022 deadline: in the meantime, for the purposes of mandates, I am committed to ensuring that half of the executive management positions of public institutions under its supervision, 37 out of 76, are occupied by women. On 1^er April 2019, this is the case for 24 public institutions, there is still progress to be made.

An Equality Memorandum of Understanding was signed in November 2018 with all the unions of the ministry, whose sense of responsibility I welcome: it aligns with (and sometimes exceeds) the ambitions of the interdepartmental agreement of 30 November 2018, the Public Service Transformation Act.

The ministry is committed to ensuring that the graduate schools that train future professionals, women and men, in arts and culture, allow young people to enter their careers with a stronger egalitarian culture. To date, 38 schools have signed an ethical charter that has several objectives: parity in the composition of juries, in the composition of the teaching staff, a pedagogy reserving a fair place for the works and careers of women (artists, architects, directors, etc.) combating violence and sexual and gender-based harassment… and gender indicators for data objectification.

As of January 2017, the Ministry of Culture has set up an AlloDiscrim external listening and alert cell, operational for all the agents of the Ministry and its related services (DRAC, Services à compétence nationale, Etablissements publics,), representing 30,000 people. Since August 2018, a new market identified as AlloSexism has specifically covered cases of sexual and sexist violence and harassment, with possible psychological follow-up. The scheme is now open to 37,000 students from higher education institutions. In two years, 190 files were processed by this unit.

As for the results, I would like to remind you that in September 2018, the Assises de l'égalité dans le cinéma was the occasion for the CNC, with the 50-50/2020 collective, to define precise measures and deadlines: mandatory gender statistics, parity in the commissions for awarding aid, bonus of 15% on the automatic support mobilized for the production of works whose artistic and technical teams tend towards parity, announcement of similar measures on film exploitation and distribution and in the audiovisual sector. I’ll make sure they’re taken.

That’s good. But this is not enough, especially since the figures for the 2019 edition of the Observatory on Equality in Culture and Communication prove that efforts still need to be made.

Also, the roadmap focuses on mentioning all the new projects, already open or in project, on which your opinion will be valuable to me.

I will mention a few:

Arts and cultural education is of major importance. Indeed, inequalities are born early: in the looks, in the representations, in the resulting assignments. A collaboration is being established with all the partners of the Ministry of Culture concerning the deconstruction of stereotypes, especially in the field of image education (School, College and students and apprentices in cinema, Canopé, etc.), with school publishers, the authors of children’s literature, the association «Lire et Faire lire», but also - in connection with the CSA- with the advertising sector. The Drac will include this objective in all future agreements with their partners and in particular local authorities.

In 2018, the Ministry of Culture contributed to the drafting of the 2019-2024 Inter-ministerial Convention for Equality in the Education System. I will sign this convention in 2019 to reaffirm my commitment to an ambitious public policy for equality between girls and boys, women and men, in the education system.

In the field of heritage, I intend to take strong measures starting this year: all initiatives of national and territorial heritage institutions, aimed at highlighting the issue of equality, will be followed and accompanied by the ministry; beyond that, I hope that a panel of voluntary museums will propose to the public from 2019 gender-based reading paths among their permanent collections and temporary exhibitions: it is a question both of giving to see the works of women artists, but also of giving to read the representation of women in the works presented. This experiment is intended to be extended or even generalized.

On the other hand, the virtual exhibition “Les femmes artistes sortir de leur réserve”, produced by the heritage branch, has been available on the department’s website since March 2019. And I want to go further: the Ministry will install on its «Open Heritage Platform» a specific database «Matrimoine» where the works of the museums of France will be referenced and located in the public space realized by women or by workshops including women. I have asked that the technical modalities of collaborative data enrichment be examined.

In the field of artistic creation: I recall two strong signals of my will to progress. Since I took office, four national stages (Villeneuve d'Ascq, le Creusot, le Mans, Foix) have changed direction: I have chosen to appoint four women to lead them. And then the NPT— As you know, I extended the deadline for the submission of applications because the number of female candidates was insufficient to make up a joint shortlist: the meaning of this decision is clear, we no longer play without «them».

A system of gender statistics, based on indicators specific to each stage and each form of art, has been developed for performing arts (theatre, circus, music and dance) and visual arts, by the Direction générale de la création artistique (DGCA) whose commitment I commend. This device will be, in the coming weeks, submitted to the National Council of Professions of the Expanded Spectacle. DGCA and DRAC will use the contractual tools (agreements and target contracts) for its implementation. This device will start in the summer of 2019 with the programming of the N-1 or N-2 seasons. The results, in terms of increasing the place of women in programming, will be subject to an equality-conditionality principle as recommended by the High Council for Equality.

The prospects are ambitious, and I am determined to bring the subject of equality to all sectors. The Senior Officer for Equality and Diversity has full responsibility for this, I expect, we expect, on her.

Media:

With the charter For women in the media, the main actors of the French audiovisual industry committed on 13 March 2019 to fight against violence and sexual and gender-based harassment: It is now appropriate to invite new companies to join and to extend the commitments made to all forms of equal opportunities (salaries, access to positions of responsibility, reconciliation of time, etc.).

I invite all public broadcasting companies to step up their efforts to achieve real equality, in the teams that compose them but also in all their programmes, in front of and behind the camera.

The ministry is accompanying the association «Let’s Take the News!» for the organization of the Estates General of Women Journalists on April 13, 2019. This event will be an opportunity to launch progressive equality measures in the world of journalism.

Similarly, the Ministry is working with the Conference of 14 Journalism Schools to integrate training modules on combating all forms of discrimination into the curriculum.

Work is under way with the CNC and video game professionals to see how the objective of equality can be integrated into the criteria governing the granting of selective aid, but also to encourage companies and schools in the sector to make specific commitments.

I hope that the same approach will be taken in the area of video music, a recent study conducted by the CSA and the CNC has shown the prevalence of sexist stereotypes.

Finally, I appeal to our major partners: local and regional authorities. Gender equality in culture is a major political issue that we must share. I hope that the associations of elected officials will agree to commit themselves to me for the development of common guiding principles, which will ensure that in every part of our territory, in mainland France and overseas, women have access to the means of creation and production.
They have the skill, the talent. It’s absurd and unfair to take it away longer.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, you have understood that the fight against discrimination- all forms of discrimination- is an absolute priority for this Ministry, for me. I hear that equality between women and men is at the forefront of this beautiful and noble struggle.

We’ll lead him together!