At 34, Marlene Schiappa is France’s secretary for gender equality and the youngest member of President Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet.
She explained to NPR that one of her first orders of business is to make street harassment of women a crime, with violators being charged thousands of dollars on the spot. Schiappa experienced such abuse growing up in Paris.
“We took alternative routes, out of our way,” she recalls, “to avoid the bands of boys.”
Criminalizing catcalling is an approach that other jurisdictions—Nottinghamshire, England; Belgium; and Buenos Aires most recently—have implemented. “We felt it was necessary to bring awareness to a common occurrence that affects the daily life of thousands of women,” Congressman Pablo Ferreyra, who introduced the Buenos Aires bill, wrote after it’s passage.
Despite the seemingly growing trend, opponents of criminalization claim that such laws would punish—at random—a few individuals in the name of addressing a systemic problem and hamper free speech.
Nevertheless, France’s Schiappa is pushing for punitive measures for catcalling because she thinks it’ll send a message that such abuse is not the fault of women. Victims blaming themselves, she argues, is a prime example of “rape culture.”