Gender-based violence in public transport: Elisabeth Borne wants a “collective start”

“Let’s react collectively, let’s raise our eyes,” launched Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who took the Paris metro on Friday, November 24 in Paris, to kick off a campaign against sexist and sexual violence in public transport.

This communication campaign, which will last a month and cost one million euros, “responds to an alarming observation: almost all women – nine out of ten women – report having suffered verbal or physical attacks on public transport. common, (…) whistling, insults, even sexual assault or even rape. This is totally unacceptable,” she said.

“We need a real change in mentalities” and “to cause a collective surge. (…) Let’s not keep our eyes glued to our phones, added the head of government, who was accompanied by the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, whose ministry is initiating and financing the campaign, Dominique Faure, her colleague of communities and Bérangère Couillard, responsible for equality between women and men and the fight against discrimination.

“Very firm commitments”

The Prime Minister then greeted RATP agents and law enforcement officers. “It happens that third parties intervene, but it takes a certain courage,” testified a police officer.

After collective transport, Clément Beaune will bring together the committee responsible for combating this violence on Friday afternoon to work with the VTC and taxi sector. He intends to ask for “very firm commitments” from the profession on data sharing and driver training, he told Le Parisien. He also hopes that all acts of sexist violence, “when proven, give rise to exclusion and disconnection from applications, where today six-month sentences are required to be so”.

Back in Matignon, Elisabeth Borne chaired a meeting with actors committed to combating violence against women. “Violence against women is still too often a shame. A shame that invades the victims when it should overwhelm the culprits,” she noted.

She welcomed several measures which will come into force on December 1, such as the payment of “emergency financial assistance” to victims of domestic violence who must leave their homes. A decree, published Friday in the Official Journal, also provides all jurisdictions with “poles specializing in domestic violence”.

Elisabeth Borne also promised the examination in the Assembly of a bill from Renaissance MP Emilie Chandler, which establishes an “immediate” protection order for victims of domestic violence.