“In politics, with women’s voices, it’s always ‘too much’ or ‘too little'”

Marlène Coulomb-Gully, specialist in gender issues. YANN LEGENDRE

Professor emeritus in information and communication sciences at the University of Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès, Marlène Coulomb-Gully works on gender issues, politics and the media. She is notably the author of Women in politics, putting an end to supporting roles (Belin, 2016). With Sexism on the public voice (L’Aube, 272 pages, 24 euros), she studies the place of women in political discourse from Simone Veil to Valérie Pécresse.

You begin your book with a brief historical review that shows the challenge faced by women to make their voices heard in the political arena. Do you consider that this has been, at least in part, lifted today?

Obviously, more and more women are “going up to the podium”, to use Olympe de Gouges’ formula; but, without being condemned “to the scaffold”, they are not spared! Although the presence of women in politics is a reality today, thanks to the so-called parity laws, it has not silenced manifestations of hostility when they speak: silent, they are accepted, but things get complicated when they talk. Farmyard cries, goat bleating, insults: even within the confines of our Parliament – ​​the place where we speak – expressions of hostility are expressed which tell us that there is still a long way to go. Public speech was conceived as a male privilege: some must learn to speak and others to share it.

Having to borrow the codes of an oratorical art designed and thought out by and for men, isn’t this one of the major constraints facing women?

Yes, it’s as if we had to walk in shoes that weren’t our size! What is a tribune? A man, necessarily (“tribune” not being the feminine of “tribune”), with a strong voice and expressive gestures, entirely committed to this physical performance of the orator. The physical writing of eloquence takes up all the codes of virility that the Mirabeaus and the Dantons have so successfully embodied in what constitutes a reference in our collective imagination. A far cry from the art of conversation that unfolded in the mixed-singing salons.

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How, when one is a woman, borrow from these codes without seeming to imitate some model? The fiasco of Valérie Pécresse’s meeting at the Zénith on February 13 tells us enough that it doesn’t work: the voice, the rhythm, the gestures, everything seemed borrowed, in every sense of the word.

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