'No more shame': the French women breaking the law to highlight femicide

 An activist who is part of Les Colleuses movement stands in front of a poster which reads: ‘I believe you’, in Paris, France, in October last year. 

Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

Alarming rates of violence have inspired a poster campaign that has spread beyond France to more than 15 countries

by Kim Willsher
THE GUARDIAN

Tue 23 Mar 2021

On a weekday evening, in between coronavirus lockdowns and curfews, Camille, Natacha and Cindy are out with a bright yellow plastic bucket of glue, two large brushes and a wad of A4 paper, each sheet covered with a single letter.

The women, all in their 20s, stop on the main road of this Paris suburb by the wall of what looks like a former bank.

“This is good,” says Camille. It is the signal for a well-practised piece of choreography: Natacha glues; Camille slaps up each lettered sheet; Cindy pastes over it.

They stand back. The message, in black letters on white paper, is clear: “Stop au harcelement de rue” (stop street harassment).

Another wall, another message. Outside the municipal swimming pool it’s paste, slap, paste: “Le consentement n’est pas une option” (consent isn’t optional). On a kiosk under the awnings of the local market, paste, slap, paste: “Stop féminicide”.

Then it is up and out of there to avoid a €68 fine if caught by the police. Another successful, albeit illegal, hit-and-run poster pasting.

For the past two years, similar messages have been appearing on walls all over Paris, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Poitiers, Lyons and other French cities. They are the work of Les Colleuses – the gluers – feminist activists who have found a simple, cheap and effective way to make women’s voices heard.

Camille Lextray became a colleuse afterthe particularly brutal murder of a young woman in September 2019 . Her partner denies her murder.

“Her name was Salomé and she was only 21 when she was beaten to death. The police had been called but they treated it as a domestic and did nothing. Later, they found her body under a pile of rubbish. We put up a collage on the anniversary of her death at the request of her mother,” Lextray said.

The idea for street posters to highlight cases of femicide was dreamed up by Marguerite Stern, a former member of the feminist activist group FEMEN. Stern, then living in Marseille, was deeply shocked by the 2019 killing of Julie Douib, 34, a mother of two children, shot dead at her home by an abusive ex-partner who goes on trial in June and denies her murder.

Douib had reported the man to the police five times before her death, but no action was taken. Stern began putting up posters denouncing violence against women in Marseille, later moving to Paris where she set up a collage collective. 

Activists known as Les Colleuses paste anti-femicide posters on a wall in Paris in October last year. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

In the early days they were called “Collages Contre les Féminicides” (collages against femicide), with groups pasting up the names of women killed by their current or former partner. The street action caught the imagination of women everywhere and spread even beyond France.

“Suddenly we had people all over the place contacting us.” says Camille. “At the last count more than 200 cities, towns and villages in France had collage groups others in London and in more than 15 countries around the world.”

“Anyone can get involved. It takes 10 minutes to write a slogan on a piece of paper, it doesn’t take a lot of money or resources. It’s extremely important for women. It’s about daring to occupy the public space, about women leaving their mark in public.

“One mother had suffered conjugal violence and painted the messages with her young son, went out and stuck them up. It’s taking back control in our lives and it is liberating. No more secrets, no more shame, no more silence. We have constructed our own media platform. This is our loudspeaker.”

France has one of the highest rates of femicide in Europe. In 2019, 146 women were killed in France by a partner or ex-partner. More than 40% of the victims had already suffered violence at the hands of their partner and nearly half of those had reported it to the police.

It’s about daring to occupy the public space, about women leaving their mark in public.

Camille

The term femicide is sometimes defined as the murder of women by men but in France it generally refers to the murder of a woman by a partner, ex-partner or family member.

In 2020, the number of femicides in France fell to 90 for the year – the lowest since such statistics began to be collated 15 years ago. But Caroline De Haas, who started the feminist collective NousToutes in 2018, said that even if the numbers dropped, “nearly 100 deaths is no reason to celebrate”.

About 200,000 women in France are estimated to suffer domestic violence every year, but fewer than one in five go to the police and the problem has worsened during Covid-19 lockdowns, Natacha said.

A hotline for female victims of violence set up by the government received 45,000 calls during the first three-month lockdown last year.

End femicide: 278 dead – the hidden scandal of older women killed by men

“Nobody was prepared for the lockdowns,” Natacha said. “We are sticking up [posters] for ourselves and for the victims and to raise the issue to a wider audience. In doing so we hope we are educating people on the subject of violence done to women and minorities and creating an atmosphere for change.”

The group is fiercely critical of what it sees as the lip service paid by the Macron government on the issue. “We were full of hope: they said they would fight against sexism, and make it a big cause. But it was words and inaction and nothing has changed,” Natacha said. “We have lost confidence in the politicians. We are disillusioned. We have to change the psychology of the patriarchy.”

Camille, Natacha and Cindy glueing up posters 

in Paris demanding an end to femicides. 

Photograph: Kim Willsher/The Guardian

The government responded to the outcry at the alarming levels of femicide in 2019 with new legislation including 40 emergency measures such as electronic bracelets to keep violent abusers from approaching their victims.

Critics say the rules, which took effect last July, are being implemented too slowly.

Marlène Schiappa, a junior minister at the interior ministry, was formerly the country’s equalities minister. She told the Guardian combatting violence against women was a government priority.

“Of course there is progress to be made in France in terms of the rights of women. The subject remains a priority for the government. We must always do more as long as violence exists,” Schiappa said.

Data collected by Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, for 2017 suggested that Romania and Northern Irelandhad the highest number of women killed by partners as a percentage of the population. But in terms of overall femicides, Eurostat found that Germany and France had the worst records. According to the UK femicide census, a woman is killed by a man who is or was her intimate partner every four days and the rate of fatal violence against women in Britain has shown no signs of decline since the organisation started monitoring in 2009.