French female minister wolf-whistled in parliament

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Cecile Duflot, the country’s 37-year-old housing minister, was subjected to the barrage of abuse while wearing a flowery summer dress in the National Assembly in Paris. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Ms Duflot, adding: ‘Obviously, more gentlemen than ladies’. Leering and shouting accompanied her every word, along with ‘phwoooaarr…’ noises. Ms Duflot infamously wore jeans at a cabinet meeting earlier this year, but her dress was a conservative one. She said after her ordeal: ‘I have worked in the building trade and I have never seen something like that. This tells you something about some MPs. I think of their wives.’embers of the Union for Popular Movement, the party whose president Nicolas Sarkozy ran France until May, were widely blamed for Tuesday’s abuse. Now a video of the incident has caused further outrage across France, with many saying the incident highlights the misogyny of the country’s political class. Anger increased when Patrick Balkany, a UMP politician and close personal friend of Mr Sarkozy, said he was only ‘admiring’ Duflot, who had probably ‘put on that dress so that we wouldn’t listen to what she was saying.’ And Jacques Myard, another UMP veteran, meanwhile said the wolf whistles were ‘in tribute to the beauty of this woman’. Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the Women’s Rights Minister, said: ‘I realise more and more that sexism has no frontiers. We politicians should set a better example.’ Francois Hollande, the new Socialist president, has introduced gender parity into his cabinet, ensuring 17 women and 17 men ministers. Despite this, many of the new women in government have been referred to as ‘Hollande’s Hunnies’ and featured in glossy magazine spreads. Only 27 per cent of the National Assembly are women, and ‘a kind of paternalism and infantilisation of women reigns’, said Paris MP Sandrine Mazetier.