In warning about a new “puritanism,” the Deneuve letter also revealed a classic cartoonish vision of America, land of puritans and prudes—even though the conversation on harassment would never have begun in France, or maybe anywhere, if it weren’t for the investigative journalists at The New York Times and The New Yorker who broke the Weinstein stories. The grotesqueries of the Trump administration may be the backdrop to the Weinstein scandal, but here in France, the fallout comes in a strange moment of generational shift, in which President Emmanuel Macron, who just turned 40, has been shaking things up. The letter in Le Monde was written by women of a certain age who seem eager to preserve the same establishment that let the shenanigans of one-time presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss Kahn be an open secret for years.

Brigitte Macron’s insistence on breaching protocol to stand beside, rather than behind, her husband at official state ceremonies has sparked a backlash on social media and unflattering comparisons to Marie Antoinette. “A woman does not have to be behind,” the French president’s wife told French RTL radio on Tuesday. Brigitte is exploring ways to take on a larger role at the Elysée palace and will focus on a portfolio of four to five issues, including social exclusion and the rights of handicapped people, the outlet reported.

85 percent of the victims were women and those living in the Paris region were at greater risk, with 7.6 percent of women aged 18-21 living in the area saying they had been sexually abused on public transport. "Young women are significantly more at risk than their older counterparts, with 2.3 percent of women aged 18-21 living in cities experiencing this behaviour," said the study.

In pressing the case, activists have been met with everything from ridicule to outright contempt to condemnation for daring to not just insult the French language, but to take actions that threaten to undermine everything that it means to be French.

A far-Right French mayor has been accused of exploiting the death of a woman who was tied to rail tracks by featuring it in his campaign to bring high speed TGV trains to his town. The "misogynistic" posters that Robert Ménard plastered around Béziers, southwestern France, depict a woman tied to the tracks with the slogan: "With the TGV, she would have suffered less." The image has appalled women's rights activists because they say it tactlessly exploits a true-life incident in which a local man murdered his wife by tying her to the tracks before throwing himself under a train.

The French Navy announced on Monday that four women will join the crew of a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) that will soon be on patrol. The four female officers, including a doctor, underwent a two-year period of training, before joining “their submarine a week, ten days ago”, said Admiral Christophe Prazuck, Navy Chief of Staff. "They are training on land and at sea," said Admiral Prazuck. It is planned that they will make the next patrol with their comrades ". Among these pioneers are "a nuclear expert" and "an expert in diving safety".

Macron announced €420m for 2018 to be spent towards equality and said that “funds dedicated to fighting violence against women have already been increased by 13 per cent”. But it’s a bit more complex than that. Taking a closer look at the planned budget, De Haas realised that the €420m figure was not simply allocated to fighting violence against women. In fact, only 15 per cent of this figure – around €65m – will really go towards preventing domestic abuse, she said.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women in France are victims of abuse by their partner in every year. On the eve of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, here's a look at the challenge France faces in combating this scourge. In France, a woman dies at the hands of her live-in partner every three days. In 2016, this amounted to 123 deaths. In 2012, 148 women were killed compared to 121 in 2011.

France’s reluctance to move more aggressively against sexual harassment reflects deeply rooted ideas about sexual relations and the relative power between men and women, said Joan Scott, a professor emeritus of intellectual and cultural history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who has studied French social and sexual mores. “There is a longstanding commitment to the notion that the French do gender relations differently — especially from prudish Americans — and that has to do with the French understanding of seduction,” she said. “Seduction is the alternative to thinking about it as sexual harassment.”

#Balancetonporc, which translates to “Expose your pig,” went viral as thousands of French women posted stories of inappropriate sexual behaviors and abuse. According to the French research institute Odoxa, 335,300 tweets with the hashtag #balancetonporc were posted in just five days. Seventeen thousand of them were testimonies of sexual aggression and harassment.