An ambitious conference this month will attempt to knit signs of restlessness among the women of France into a new movement...
Women were massively present during the November-December 1996 public sector strike. And in a whole series of smaller strikes, most of which have not hit the media, others, like the "kidnapping" of the director of Credit Foncier by his staff, supremely public events.
Women are also at the centre of the French movements against unemployment and marginalisation, like AC! (Act Together Against Unemployment). Women have participated in all the recent occupations of the ASSEDIC (offices which pay out unemployment and other social allowances) and the ANPE (job centres). Women have been active in the struggle of the "paper-less" immigrants and in the homeless movement. And women will play an active role in the European Marches against Unemployment, Job-precariousness and Exclusion, which will begin in April and cumulate in an Amsterdam rally during the Inter-Governmental Conference which will decide the future direction of EU integration.
Many of these women; feminists, trade unionists, researchers, community activists and political militants, will come to the Hearings on Women's Rights on 14-15 March.
The Hearings will embrace all areas of struggle, with the ambition of rebuilding broad, unitary initiatives to respond to the fascist threat and the Catholic fundamentalists, and to "put a spanner in the works" of all governmental and employer proposals which would reduce women's rights and recompense in the workplace.
The initiative for this event was born after the unprecedented success of the 25 November 1996 demonstration for women's rights (see "Women's movement re-surges", Maya Surduts, International Viewpoint #272, January 1996, p.5). According to Marie-Annick Vigan of Cahiers du féminisme*, "in à context of social regression, growing fundamentalisms and the renaissance of a reactionary moral order, the demonstration last November created a new dynamic in favour of women's rights. More than 100 organisations and associations signed an appeal to "take stock, together, of the situation women find themselves in today, and define, together, the objectives of our struggle and action."
"This is a tremendous challenge. We already know that women, as a whole, are underprivileged compared to men; that women are underpaid, overexploited, and underrepresented in the institutions, the political parties, the trade unions and so on. But things become much more interesting when you try to see what all this means in practice in a region, a town, a particular party... and when you then put all this information together, and compare all the solutions which are being proposed, at a local and a national level, to improve the situation.
It is also a tremendous challenge to bring all these people together; to maintain this desire for unity between militants, men and women, with very different political and trade union trajectories, sometimes with a history of confrontations, and between people with very diverse professional, regional and even generational origins. But if we can bring together these varied experiences and the accumulated experience and thinking of the feminist movement, then this can only help re-launch a women's movement here in France."
Vigan does not exaggerate the difficulties which the organisers have faced in building these Hearings. Many associations were sceptical about the feasibility of such an event, or the utility of taking part. And it was hard to reach beyond the "cartel" of sponsoring organisations, and involve large numbers of potentially interested but unorganised women in the preparation of the event.
But beyond these two organisational difficulties, is an enormous strategic question. Is it possible to have thorough, on-going debates, on the basis of local experiences, which will not be "forced" to a conclusion by the organisers, but which will nevertheless allow the distillation of a minimum consensus, on the basis of which proposals for common action can be generated? In a few weeks we will know... ★ [JD]
* Quarterly publication of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International. 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108. Montreuil, France