VOA标准英语2012--Women's Rights Activists Encouraged by New French President

（单词翻译）

Women's Rights Activists¹ Encouraged by New French President

The easy part of Olivia Cattan's day ends at lunchtime, when she leaves her work as a pre-school assistant and starts her other job as a journalist and founder² of the feminist³ organization "Paroles de Femmes," or "Words of Women." 

Cattan has advised France's new President, Francois Hollande, on women's issues and Mr. Hollande's cabinet includes an equal number of male and female ministers.

It also includes a new ministry⁴ of women's rights, headed by 34-year-old Najat Vallaud Belkacem.

Cattan says those are promising⁵ first steps.

"It's a fantastic gesture for Mr. Hollande. It's like a page has been turned. It's the first parity⁶ government in France. He's really turned a page in terms of French feminism," Cattan said.

France also has a new, unmarried "first partner," journalist Valerie Trierweiler, who accompanied Hollande on his first official visit to the United States.

"It [the partnership] shows that you don't have to get married to live with someone. We have the right to choose the kind of lives we want," Cattan said.

Women's issues have been in the spotlight⁷ in France for other reasons - notably⁸ for the sex-scandal allegations dogging former International Monetary⁹ Fund chief and French politician, Dominique Strauss Kahn.

Economics and minority rights professor Anne Boring says the Strauss-Kahn scandal has shaken the society.

"Now women are more willing to say what has happened to them or to denounce violence against women," Boring said.

On the streets of Paris, the French appear to be pleased with women's new assertion in political life.

Among them, 40-year-old businessman, Jean-Michel Bambois.

"It's good not to differentiate¹⁰ between women and men. What counts is their competency," he said.

Theater director Nadia Vonderheyden also praises recent changes, including the elimination¹¹ of the term "Mademoiselle," or "Miss," from French government documents.

"Things are beginning to reflect, just a tiny bit, the reality in French society, which wasn't the case before," she said.

But Professor Boring says women must still fight to get ahead.

"France is a country where women are still discriminated¹² against in the workplace and salaries of women [with] similar qualifications are much lower than the salaries of men," she said.

Rights activists like Olivia Cattan say they will be watching closely to make sure France's new government makes good on its promises of promoting women's equality.