Thousands turned out in the streets of Paris, with hundreds in other major cities
Thousands turned out in the streets of Paris, with hundreds in other major cities AFP

Thousands demonstrated in major French cities Saturday against violence targeting women, as campaigners push for the country to learn from a mass rape trial that has shocked the public.

Prosecutors will in the coming week ask the court in the southern city Avignon to sentence 51 men, one who drugged his wife over the course of a decade and dozens of others who accepted his invitations to abuse her at their home.

Out on the street, "the more of us there are, the more visible we are, this is everyone's business, not just women," said Peggy Plou, a local elected official from the Indre-et-Loire region in western France who had made the trip to Paris.

Thousands of people marched in the capital alone, mostly women but including some children and men.

And there were hundreds-strong demonstrations in other major cities including Marseille in the south, Lille in the northeast and Rennes in the northwest.

Many demonstrators carried signs with variations on the slogan "shame must switch sides", popularised by the plaintiff in the Avignon trial, Gisele Pelicot.

She has been celebrated for accepting public hearings in her case rather than a trial behind closed doors, despite their painful content.

"A law about consent must be put in place very quickly. Just because someone doesn't say something, doesn't mean that they agree" to sexual contact, said Marie-Claire Abiker, 78, a retired nurse also marching in Paris.

France's legal definition of rape calls it "any act of sexual penetration... by violence, constraint, threats or surprise" but includes no language about consent -- a key demand of women's rights groups especially since the MeToo movement launched in the late 2010s.

"In 2018, there were basically only women (demonstrating). Today there are, let's say, 30 percent men. That's really great news," said Amy Bah, a member of the NousToutes (all of us women) feminist group protesting in Lille.

"I feel like this is my business too, we each have our role to play, especially men," said Arnaud Garcette, 38, at the Marseille demonstration in the city's touristy historic port with his two children.

"We're at the source of the problem, and at the source of the solutions too," he added.

The demonstrations called out by more than 400 campaign groups come two days before Monday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Equality Minister Salima Saa has promised "concrete and effective" measures to coincide with the global day.