A friend of a member of the ‘touspourchacune.com’ team was talking to her niece and daughter about their grandfather, an anaesthetist who died around ten years ago. She told them how she had hated him for many years because he hadn’t wanted her to become a nurse. She thought he was proud and underestimated her Then she came across an article about the various forms of aggression suffered by female medical staff at the hands of their male superiors, and everything suddenly became clear to her. Even though she had long since forgiven her father, she realised that as he knew her very well, he knew that she would not have let herself be abused, especially in a country like France
which is supposed to defend the rights of all.
He couldn’t tell her that far too many doctors and department heads were abusing their position to obtain favours from the female medical profession. And knowing how pro-feminist she was at the time, she would have exhausted herself fighting a pointless battle with no end in sight. You might think that things had changed, but when you read the article about the recent arrest of a department head and a doctor (link), you just realise that things used to be worse. With social networks, information circulates better, that’s all.
Every time, it’s the same thing: everyone knows, but nothing is said or done. Worse still, the pressure is put on the people involved or the witnesses, who are intimidated. The same article goes on to say :
«Three
women also reported having been threatened or intimidated by a health executive in connection with the reports, while others reported pressure from another health executive, herself implicated in harassment in the workplace»
What can you say when a woman is a wolf to a woman
Even if it takes time, one day people will have to account for how certain people were able to act with impunity for such serious crimes. As well as providing justice for the victims, we need to give ourselves the means to ensure that this never happens again. We need to do at least two things: firstly, to take better account of victims’ complaints and secondly, to impose tougher penalties on the aggressors
and those who support them.
This is what we want for all countries, and for India, with the recent story of the medical student intern who was raped and mutilated in her workplace. In addition to justice, we need to put in place a whole framework so as not to discourage vocations
and to enable those who want to become doctors to do so under good conditions.
The principle of consent is a real challenge in everyday life and in the workplace for women and some men, and it’s not new. In the artistic world, long before the advent of cinema, before Harvey Weinstein and Depardieu, to name but a few (link) a young painter tried to catch her rapist, and the only way she could do it was to paint a picture of him. This is how Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian painter of the seventeenth century, painted ‘Judith and Holofernes (1612)’, two women trying to behead a man. She is said to have become a feminist painter as a result.
Nobody wants to relive the case of Aileen Wuornos, the first American serial killer. Confronted with sexual assaults from an early age, she left home at a young age and became a prostitute to survive. Then, disgusted and embittered, she took the law into her own hands and became a murderer. No one came out a winner in this story, not the victims, not justice and certainly not humanity. So let’s respect the principle of consent as best we can, in private and in the professional sphere, for the good of all.