Although the Americans seem to be a lot more vocal about this issue, they answers all boil down to the same few things: acceptance and equal treatment of both sexes. I was surprised by the amount of people who said gender equality would be impossible (or at least very difficult) to achieve. Proportionately more people said that on the French side, so I wonder why don’t you think gender equality is possible?

I also noticed that there was a much greater emphasis on eliminating gender roles on the American side. How do you think French gender roles compare to American gender roles, and do you also feel that eliminating gender roles is the only way to reach true equality?

L’égalité entre les sexes signifie un niveau égal de pouvoir, de participation et de visibilité des deux sexes dans toutes les sphères de la vie publique et privée.Elle vise à promouvoir la pleine participation des femmes et des hommes dans la société. La chose qui peut garantir cette égalité est d’impliquer la femme toujours dans tous les domaines.Cette égalité doit être un combat permanent, il faut continuellement la protéger et l’encourager.

As @elemcy points out, the American responses are a lot more passionate. Both sides express equal pay as one measurement of gender equality, so I’m wondering if there are also a lot of other similarities in terms of labor inequality between France and the US. In America, there have also been complaints about maternity leave and affirmative action for job hiring. Also, a lot of companies (especially technology companies) are starting to publish diversity reports and pledging to hire more women in the upcoming years. Are there similar movements in France?

One other point is that the Americans have a more liberal idea of what gender equality would entail: women should have freedom of their bodies, to wear whatever clothes they want. Maybe this isn’t as evident on the French side because it’s already acceptable for women to go to the beach topless (which would be frowned upon here). Girls in France - have you ever felt like there were certain expectations on the way you dress or the way you look?

@GOKU. Je suis d’accord avec tes points. Je voudrais ajouter que il est important que nous devrions élever nos enfants de voir les deux sexes comme égaux.

@kashlgh it is interesting that you bring up that women in France have more freedom to wear whatever they want because, while women can go topless on the beach, they aren’t allowed to wear religious face coverings and veils in public places.

@erbri I agree wholeheartedly with your point. Freedom for women to dress however is not limited to wearing as little clothing as one pleases, but should also include wearing as much clothing as one pleases.

I agree with @Goku and @Math.ceil, I think it’s very important to teach kids from a young age that everyone is equal and that we need equal participation by the two sexes in all aspects of society. I believe I learned at one point that there is a law in France that requires a 50/50 ratio between men and women in companies and in the government, is this true? And do you think this has been effective in promoting gender equality? If not, has it affected French society in any way?

I also agree with @goku and @math.ciel but I think it’s important to note that just telling kids that everyone is equal doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll believe it. It’s important to TREAT our kids equally (for example, letting girls play with power tools with their brothers, and letting boys play with dolls with their sisters). Kids are very observant - after all, that’s how they learn and absorb new material. When they see that we treat each other differently based on our sexes, they recognize that our society believes one gender to be more important than the other.

Gender equality is a huge topic in America, especially now with increasing celebrity women speaking out and not putting up with sexist journalists (have you seen any recent Scarlett Johansson interviews about her Black Widow character? It’s glorious. If looks could kill…), and also increasing people speaking out against double standards not just in life but also in journalism and in Hollywood. For example, when star football players of a school rape a girl, the newspapers always try to paint a picture of this girl “ruining the lives of these football players” even though obviously these football players are ruining their own lives. More and more people are becoming outraged and speaking out and putting pressure on news outlets and our judicial system, but even when a judge rules a man guilty (which is not often), there are still sympathizers with the perpetrator. Just look at the #FreeKesha movement - she was abused and raped by a man and is being forced to continue to work with him - and conversely, Chris Brown - he physically abused his girlfriend and somehow he still makes music and his work is still being consumed.

I wonder if there are as active gender equality movements in France? How does France deal with things like rape culture, and how do media outlets portray it? Are there French celebrities who speak out against gender inequality and double standards?

@Goku, I definitely agree that women need to be represented more and included in society throughout the world. Although there is still a lot of discrimination towards women I think gender equality can be possible. Why do you think a lot of the French students dont think gender equality can be possible?

Pourquoi est-ce que j’ai l’impression que l’égalité des sexe implique l’a-sexualisation de la société ? l’homme et la femme sont de natures différentes pourquoi vouloir leur donner nécessairement la même position ?

@l’homme noir Je pense aussi que l’égalité des sexes est possible, le fait que certains pense le contraire vient du fait qu’il est très difficile de faire changer les gens mais avec le temps nécessaire cela reste faisable.

Je pense que viser l’égalité parfaite nécessite un grand bouleversement de la société. Dès la naissance, l’égalité doit exister. C’est à dire qu’il n’y doit plus y avoir de différences entre les jouets et vêtement garçon/fille jusqu’à faire disparaître le rôle mère/père.
Ce qui n’est pas possible et mènerait la société vers une perte de la valeur de l’Homme qui cherche à se différencier des autres.

@dwar Men and women are different, for example, by nature men tend to be physically stronger. This is not the issue. Part of the issue is that people believe that because women cannot have important roles of power or influential careers in science and engineering because of their ‘nature’. Thus, saying men are somehow logically superior and better.

This is also the case for nurses. Women tend to be more nurturing by nature, however this does not mean that a man cannot be nurturing and become a better nurse than a woman.

We may be biologically different, but I do not think that biology means that one gender is more skilled in any area than another. Such gender roles are stifling.

Fejiro: Wow, your response was very good. I hadn’t even seen it like that.

@Steins, I totally agree with you that in order to truly have gender equality we need to get rid of these implied roles that particular genders should fill (through playing with certain toys, having to be a “mom/dad” to those around them) and that it is incredibly hard to change. Do you think that there are any smaller things associated with a particular gender that might be gone soon? I know that here pink and purple are often thought of as “girl” colors but especially as everyone gets older this becomes less and less the case. Also, parents are starting to clothe babies in yellow and green colored clothes which are supposedly gender neutral colors as opposed to pink/purple for a girl or blue for a boy. Does France have things like this?

@Fejiro: It’s important to note that your comments imply a very binary structure to gender, which is not true - gender, just like sexuality, is a spectrum. Thus, a person who was biologically born a man and identifies as a woman will be “by nature, physically stronger” like you said, and as such there are different cases for people who are intersex, transgender, genderfluid, and etc. I do completely agree with what you said about gender roles being stifling - not only are they stifling, they are non-inclusive of all of the world’s people.

@Tasha: the funniest thing about associating colors with gender, i. e. pink for girls and blue for boys, is that before like the 50s, the opposite was true. Boys used to be associated with pink, because it was an iteration off of red, which is historically a color associated with war (because blood, probably?), but in the early and mid 1900s, pink began to be reclaimed by the gay community. God forbid your child is wearing the same color as a gay person.
Basically, everyone should just wear colors they like and think their baby looks cute in. And let’s be real, babies look adorable in any color.

@Tasha En France aussi le bleu est plus associé aux garçons et le rose aux filles, et de plus en plus de gens choisissent des couleurs mixtes à la fois pour éviter ce formatage mais aussi car beaucoup de personnes ne veulent pas forcement connaitre le sexe du bébé avant la naissance.

I agree with @hera013. We need to treat each other equally and show the equality to the future generations so that we can truly change the way society as a whole views gender roles and equality. I think it is important that the fight for gender equality continue with the sense of urgency it has had over the last several years now. Technology and social media has made it nearly impossible for people not to listen to the plight of any group if they band together to complain and demand a change. More so than ever, people are listening and they know what is going on around the world and it helps them also garner the courage to fight against inequalities in their own locales.

le sexe est tout simplement une différence qui est mise sur la terre pour qu’on puisse survivre et un moyen pour protéger notre espèce comme c’est le cas pour tous les autres espèces dans ce monde.
Être femme ou homme ne doit pas être vu comme une discrimination pour un sexe par rapport à l’autre, mais plutôt, chaque sexe possède des missions qui le différencie de l’autre. Et ça, on le voit même dans la nature, par exemple, le lion et la lionne possèdent tous les deux des missions différents malgré qu’ils sont du même espèce.