#MeToo and the French medical profession

Hello, I’m Annette Young and welcome to the 51 Percentage Show about women reshaping our world. Coming up, the French medical profession dealing with a series of Me Too allegations in hospitals, including one leading female specialist levelling accusations against a male colleague. Also, it may be 2024, but a full time working woman still makes only $0.88 for every euro or dollar earned by a man across the OECD. We’ll be talking shortly to senior economist Valerie Frey on the effectiveness of pay transparency laws and the Egyptian female rappers vying for the spotlight as they seek to pursue their careers in a highly traditional Muslim country. But first to a developing story, and New York’s highest court has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crimes. This on the grounds of a crucial mistake by the judge in letting prosecutors introduce testimony from women who claim Weinstein assaulted them, even though they were not part of the charges he faced at the time. It will now be up to the Manhattan District Attorney to decide if there is indeed a need for a retrial. But Weinstein is not a free man, as he’s serving a 16 year sentence over rape in California in connection to another case. In the meantime, here in France, the medical profession has been rocked by a series of allegations of sexual harassment and violence in hospitals. A leading infectious disease female specialist recently having made accusations against a male emergency care specialist. Since then, more women have come forward to testify. As a raw debris reports, she shares her story for the first time. To encourage others to speak up, in 2019, the young medical intern assisted a gynaecologist with the examination of a patient’s uterus. At that moment he turned to me and said actually he wasn’t even addressing me directly. He said, oh, I like it when they’re on their knees. Plus we don’t pay them much. I was like, what did he just say? Is he talking to me? Then he said, OK, meet me in my office at 7 PMI. Won’t tell my wife, don’t worry. I just said no thanks, I’m good. And he replied, oh come on, I’m just joking. Honestly, he didn’t seem bothered by it at all. She didn’t know the gynecologist very well and didn’t dare to confront him. I was very angry, very frustrated that I didn’t have the response I would have liked At that moment. I felt like I had no rights against him, especially during a time when I felt vulnerable in the hospital because I wanted to make a good impression. Could this be the start of a me Too movement in the medical field? Last week infectious disease doctor Karin Lacombe spoke out, accusing a well known emergency care specialist, Patrick Pulu, whom she describes as a predator with all the signs of virility, boasting, overflowing with confidence. Thanks to his position of authority, they worked together at a hospital in Paris where she says he quote, grabbed an intern by the neck and rubbed his lower abdomen against her. Patrick Polu strongly denies the allegations. I was stunned to learn the rumours were laid in this article, which I strongly contest. The case has raised questions in the medical community, with many denouncing A lute culture. In 2021, a study revealed that nearly 50% of female medical students received sexist remarks, more than 38% experienced sexual harassment and 5% inappropriate behaviour. 1 Union of Medical Interns is calling for witnesses to come forward. It’s incredible to think that in large departments where everyone is aware, I mean, dozens and hundreds of people have known about this for years, yet it’s still happening so openly on a daily basis. Obviously, this is something that needs to be stopped. The French health minister is currently working with healthcare professionals to come up with a strategy to combat sexual misconduct. Now for the working woman. The issue of salary can indeed be a thorny point, especially as so many of us are still earning less than men who are doing the same job. Last year a new EU directive was adopted to strengthen the principle of equal pay. The new law, forcing member states to adjust their pay equality laws, boost pay transparency along with the enforcement of equal pay. This is a full time working woman makes only $0.88 for every euro or dollar earned by a man on average across the OECD. But do such moves actually worker? Joining me now is Valerie Fry, a senior economist with the OECD who’s been researching pay transparency. Valerie, thank you so much for your time. Pay transparency these days is very much a corporate buzz phrase. But in reality, there’s a big difference between talking the talk and walking the walk, isn’t there? There certainly is, and it has become in many ways a buzzword. It’s something we’re hearing about all the time. But I’m happy to report that a lot of countries are in fact actually making very good progress on this. So there are 38 OSD member countries, and 21 of them, over half now, require private sector firms to report the gender pay gap between women and men. And that’s just one aspect of pay transparency. So when we hear the word pay transparency, it’s really this umbrella term referring to a range of different policy measures including pay gap reporting, equal pay audits, salary disclosures and job advertisements, and even to an increasing degree, gender neutral, gender sensitive classifications in salary scales as well. So it is a bit of a buzzword, but it’s also a policy space where we’re seeing a lot of movement in OECD countries. But how is it that we’re in 2024, We’ve got a record number of women working these days as well as remaining in the workforce. Yet we still are seeing a significant gender pay gap in so many parts of the world. It’s true. And I think This is why so many governments are really pushing pay transparency now. In a lot of ways it’s an easy win. It’s very low cost for most governments. It’s not a very high administrative burden for firms and as you say, women. The median woman earns $0.88 to every dollar or euro earned by a man in the OECD. And this is after decades and decades of progress. So it’s a really remarkably stubborn feature of Labor markets and decades of public policies. You know, interventions in schools, interventions and work life balance supports have helped, have helped a lot. But we’re sort of reaching the point where things feel quite stuck. And I think governments are very interested in trying new things. And so this idea of disclosing pay, putting the spotlight on firms that are, that are practicing unfair pay practices, is really gaining momentum. But Valerie is surely not just laws and directives that are going to end gender pay discrimination. Other factors kick in as well, such as the lack of women and senior management, not to mention of course segregation and different types of jobs. So how does pay transparency address this part of the wage gap? So I think it’s challenging. And in and in a lot of ways, it’s kind of a last step. So I mean it we can do a little bit pay transparency can do a bit in terms of vertical segregation, right, where we talk about men are disproportionately represented management roles. In a lot of countries, firms are required to report salary differences at different levels of the organization. They’re required to report whether or not men are disproportionately represented as managers and as leaders of companies. So that helps a bit. But I think the big drawback to pay transparency there are two One is that if there’s evidence of unfair pay, it’s often still on a woman to address it herself, either through her company or through the judicial system. And this is a really tremendously high cost in terms of effort. But women who report cases of discrimination need a lot of courage, don’t they? And a lot of resources. It requires a lot of time and money and and emotional labor to get through that kind of a process. So that’s one big barrier that I think limits the effectiveness of pay transparency. The others that in a lot of ways this comes too late. It comes after years or decades of really gendered career choices and constraints that women have faced. And so it’s kind of a last step, but we certainly need to continue to see even stronger interventions throughout the every evening at the weekend, Don’t Miss World Round Up presented by Jean Emil Jamin for a better understanding of world events. Join me every weekend here on France 24 for World Round Up Join us on France 24 for a crucial and exciting election season. In June of this year, citizens from the 27 member states will be asked to choose the next European Parliament made-up of 720 MEPs. France 24th. Talking Europe will bring you a series of special programs. We’ll look at the political powerhouses in the EU and also talk about groups of countries and regions. We’ll have debates for you with MEPs from different political parties and we’ll look at the key issues of our day that cut across national borders. Talking Europe takes you to the heart of the EU election campaign. Talking Europe on France 24 and france24.com, the two teams in the early days of the when I came to college I had no idea that people from Newnham went to work at Bletchley Park and did all the important code breaking that helped us shorten the Second World War. No idea at all. And that’s because they’d signed the Official Secrets Act and that meant they weren’t going to talk about anything to anyone. It was only when I saw articles later on I realised that women that I might have known had been involved in code breaking. I only realized that Jane was at Bletchley when I saw an article in a book by Hinsley and Strip where a lady called Jane Reynolds. Jane Monroe, she became, was mentioned as having been at Bletchley. And I thought, I wonder if that’s the same woman that I know. So I did then speak with her family and they said, yes, she was there, but she’ll never talk to you about it because she signed the Official Secrets Act. And if you ask her what she did and you really press her, she will say, oh, I made the tea.