About 100 performers, filmmakers, writers and others who say they have suffered harassment or abuse demanded action in an open letter to Macron and an online petition carried in the Journal du dimanche newspaper. "Mr. President, we are facing a grave crisis. Are you on our side?" they wrote.

In the wake of the #MeToo hashtag that followed news of Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuse, French women came up with a hashtag of their own — one that points at aggressors, not victims. #BalanceTonPorc or "out your pig" has exploded and shows no signs of abating.

Supporters of inclusive writing say the new forms are aimed at use in written communication, not speech or literature. They also point out the Académie is hardly a model of gender equality. Established by Louis XIII’s chief minister Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, outlawed after the French Revolution and restored by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, there have been a total of 726 members, only eight of whom have been women. The first, Belgian-born novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, was elected in 1980.

As the #metoo campaign erupted across the United States, a similar campaign unfolded across France under the hashtag #balancetonporc or #squealonyourpig. As in America, French women have begun naming and shaming their attackers. Since it started, several prominent figures have been targeted in French assault claims, including a lawmaker in President Emmanuel Macron's party, a judge on France's equivalent of reality show "America's Got Talent" and Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan, a leading lecturer in Islamic studies.

"There was a risk of them fondling your bottom, a risk of trouble," she said on France 2 television. In comments to the news magazine L'Express she said "there was a blacklist of guys with whom you couldn't take risks". She said it was not a written list, but "informal advice exchanged in the canteen, in coffee breaks, in the evening".

"We still find men who say ... 'It's French culture, it's love à la française.' They don't want the law to say it's not allowed. There is cultural resistance. They're afraid we are forbidding them to talk to women. I think it's really important to have that debate, to say 'It's ok to talk but, it's not ok to assault, there is a real difference.'"

Mrs Macron said: "I'm very happy that women are speaking out. It could be a cloud with a silver lining." She added: "That's enough. I think that all this (harassment) must stop very quickly. Freeing up speech is the best thing that could happen. (The women who speak out) are very brave to do so. I urge them to break their silence. It's wonderful. Something is happening, really."

Men will be fined for catcalling or other lewd behaviour towards women in public under the new harassment policy, which is set to be passed next year. “It’s completely necessary because at the moment street harassment is not defined in the law,” Schiappa told French radio station RTL.

The French Academy is France’s 400-year-old voice of authority on language and its sole British member, Sir Michael Edwards, has deemed the gender neutral words “gibberish”.