Ahead of International Women's Day, and five weeks before the first round of the presidential election, Equipop, Oxfam France, and CARE France, with the participation of women's rights organizations such as the Fondation des Femmes, Planning Familial, and ONE France, have assessed Emmanuel Macron's "major national cause of the five-year term." This report is part of the collective mobilization of French feminist associations #EcoutezNousBien(Listen to Us).

The Report in the media

• Release
• Huff Post
• The Wave
• France 3 Ile-de-France Region
• Terrafemina
• Blast
• Komitid
• Southwest
• Le Drenche / West France
• Médiapart
• I'm interested

The associations analyzed the laws, reforms, speeches, and initiatives undertaken over the past five years on the major markers of gender equality policy: political parity and state budgets, the fight against violence, professional equality, foreign policy, and sexual and reproductive rights. Our assessment criteria are simple: have the actions met the needs and lived up to the expectations of a "major national cause"? The verdict is clear. The overall assessment of the five-year term is insufficient for a president who declared himself a "feminist candidate" in 2017. According to our scale, only the areas of sexual and reproductive rights and health and feminist diplomacy have reached the "encouraging" level. The results are "insufficient" in terms of combating violence, professional and economic equality, political parity, and budgets allocated to gender equality.

"With this report, Equipop and its partners take stock of actions taken in the area of gender equality and the long road ahead to bring about profound change in our society. Today, everything should be pushing candidates to make feminist issues a key part of their platforms, yet these topics are conspicuously absent from the presidential campaign. In the coming days, we will therefore be meeting with the campaign teams and the outgoing government to make our recommendations heard." Lucie Daniel – Advocacy Expert at Equipop

Conclusion: measures that lacked ambition and were insufficiently funded

Key figures from the report

Budget and institutions: the fundamentals of equality 

• The policy promoting gender equality accounts for 0.25% of the state budget.
• 80% of government departments are headed by male chief of staffs.

• On average, one woman was killed by her partner or ex-partner every three days during Emmanuel Macron's five-year term.
• Four out of ten women who are victims of violence and request assistance have no accommodation options.
• Only 1% of rapes and attempted rapes result in convictions.
• The current number of high-risk phone calls represents only 1 to 2% of domestic violence cases.
• The budget allocated to domestic violence is three times lower than the needs identified by specialized associations.

• The average score for professional equality among French companies in 2021 is 86/100, yet French female workers are still paid less than men.
• There is a shortage of 230,000 nursery places in France, and 40% of parents with children under the age of 3 have no childcare solution.
• Paternity leave in Spain is four times longer than paternity leave in France.
• It would take a French nurse more than 150 years of work to earn what a CAC40 CEO earns on average in one year.

• France ranks 26th out of 30 countries in terms of aid to women's rights.
• The Quai d'Orsay is headed by four men (no women), and nearly three-quarters of embassies are headed by men.
• More than 60% of people living in extreme poverty worldwide are women, including 47 million women who have fallen below this threshold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The deadline for having an abortion has been extended from 12 to 14 weeks in France.
• Endometriosis affects 10% of women of childbearing age in France, or 1.5 to 2.5 million women.
• Nearly 2 million women and girls face difficulties accessing sanitary protection, primarily for financial reasons.