Tatiana Kozhevnikova has the world’s strongest vagina… and has patented a fitness program so that you too can lift up to 14 kg with your « intimate muscles ». Youtube
It’s enough to exercise your vagina five minutes a day, ladies, and in just one week you’ll be able to give yourself and your man unforgettable pleasure in bed. Tatiana Kozhevnikova
Le ventre de nos femmes nous donnera la victoire. Houari Boumediene (ONU, 10.04.74)
At the origin, family policy wasn’t about women, it was about Germany. French mothers have conditions women elsewhere can only dream of. But stereotypes remain very much intact. Geneviève Fraisse
We spend the most money and we offer good childcare, it’s as simple as that. Our country understood a long time ago that to reconstruct a nation you need children. Nadine Morano (ministre de la famille)
On peut même parler d’une exception française! Or, nous effectuons autant d’interventions chirurgicales pour incontinence urinaire et prolapsus génital (descente d’organes) que dans les pays où cette rééducation périnéale systématique n’existe pas. A titre d’exemple, nous ne faisons pas mieux que les Anglo-Saxons qui, eux, ont opté pour la méthode Kegel : des exercices de contraction du périnée que l’on montre aux accouchées avant leur sortie et qu’elles font ensuite toutes seules chez elles. Philippe Bourcier
L’ignorance agit comme une ceinture de chasteté psychologique. Elle réduit considérablement le potentiel sexuel des femmes. Elisa Brune
J’ai vu récemment un documentaire sur Arte, intitulé Le Clitoris, cet inconnu. Les jeunes filles interrogées étaient aussi ignorantes que moi. Je n’ai eu aucune éducation sur mon anatomie. Au lycée, en SVT (sciences de la vie et de la Terre), le seul cours dont je me souvienne concernait la reproduction humaine. Et il n’était question que de l’anatomie masculine. Sûrement parce que sans le pénis et sa potion magique, pas de reproduction. Tandis que le plaisir féminin n’est pas indispensable à la reproduction. Etudiante (24 ans)
Nous ne connaissons rien de notre corps ou si peu. Nous ne parlons pas beaucoup entre nous de notre sexualité, la jouissance féminine reste un tabou. Anciennes élèves des classes préparatoires d’un lycée parisien du 20e arrondissement
Everybody agrees that reform is necessary. Without reform now, our children and grandchildren will pay the price. Martine Durand (OECD)
To us, something like raising the retirement age seems like a pragmatic step. But the French have invested so much hope and energy in their social welfare system that having to give any of that up provokes this sort of reaction. That reflex is born partly of genuine egalitarianism, but it also reflects a long-standing suspicion of employment as an instrument of capitalism. In France work is seen by many people as oppressive. (…) They want what their parents and grandparents had and that’s just the problem. They can’t have it, because there’s no way to pay for it. Timothy Smith (Queen’s University)
The irony, of course, is that if you have a job, there are few better places to work than Western Europe. Consider France, where, weeks after giving birth, women are offered state-paid, one-on-one, extended courses in vaginal therapy. The training, known as la rééducation périnéale après accouchement, or “perineal retraining after childbirth,” includes a personal trainer known as a kinesitherapist, along with wands and electric devices meant to strengthen muscles in the birth canal. After vaginal re-education, French women are then offered extended courses in abdominal training, aimed at flattening their tummies. The state picks up the tab for that, too. It’s the beginning of an exhaustive, heavily subsidized set of benefits that carries through until a child reaches young adulthood—all in the name of encouraging French women to have children. The program begins with a birth or adoption bonus, a four-month paid maternity leave, plus a basic allowance. Laws allow a woman to opt not to work until her child is three, and guarantees her a full-time job on her return. At that point, the child is eligible for state-funded daycare, which runs to kindergarten, and every fall, parents receive a grant for every child they return to school, amounting to $420 for children over 11 this year. They also receive a housing benefit, tax benefits, and discounts on public transit, cultural events and shopping. In the summer, children are entitled to subsidized, full-day summer camps with activities like trips to the museum, farms and pools along with three square meals (and snacks). For some parents, daily fees for the camps start at as little as 65 cents. (…) Suffice to say, this notion of fairness comes at a price, and the bills are starting to pile up (France’s family benefit schemes last year alone cost $140 billion—or five per cent of its GDP—with over 40 per cent of subsidies going to middle-class and wealthy families). To pay them, governments will need either punishing spending cuts or tax hikes that will discourage business. Growth during this painful period of “deleveraging” in Europe’s largest economies could sink as low as one per cent, a prediction that last summer prompted Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, to fret publicly about a “lost decade” for the world’s advanced economies. (…) The challenge is most acute in France, where the average person spends 21 years of his life on pension—the highest of any country in the world. By 2050, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projections, there will be one person on benefits for every two who are of working age in France, compared to the current ratio of 1:4. When you consider that only 62 per cent of working-age French people are actually in the labour force, it’s not hard to imagine the crisis that lies in wait. (…) An increase in productivity might ease some of this burden, generating more income that could then theoretically be taxed. But here, too, Europe’s culture of entitlement stands in the way. While the region’s most advanced economies produce almost as much per hour worked as the U.S. (the OECD benchmark), they lag far behind when annual production is measured on a per-person basis, suggesting those five-week holidays are dragging down economies. Germany, for example, produces only nine per cent less per hour than the U.S., but 25 per cent less per person; France makes 30 per cent less per capita, and Spain 33 per cent. This might be understandable were those countries less technologically advanced than America, or if they had lousy education systems. But the culprit in this case is the basket of benefits enjoyed by workers, and labour laws that prevent firms from laying off workers due to swings in the market. The latter issue is vital, says Smith at Queen’s, because the rules meant to protect workers are discouraging companies from hiring in the first place. Fully one in four people in France who are fired, laid off or fail to get their contracts renewed take their employer to court under laws allowing them to contest the decision. “It takes an average of six months to get one of those actions resolved,” says Smith. “It’s a huge disincentive to hire, and it is the key problem facing France’s economy.” McLean’s
Politique familiale à près de 100 milliards d’euros annuels soit plus de 5% du PIB et le double de la moyenne européenne, séances de rééducation périnéale comme la sonde vaginale pour le suivi à la maison prises en charge à 100 % par la Sécurité sociale, rééducation abdominale, bonus pour naissance ou adoption, congé de maternité de 4 mois, allocations familiales, crèches subventionnées, allocation de rentrée scolaire, allocations logement, déductions fiscales, réductions familles nombreuses, colonies de vacances subventionnées …
Où l’on (re)découvre, ultime vestige de trois guerres désatreuses avec l’Allemagne sans compter celle contre l’Eglise et après la Chine et les Rwandais, que le corps des femmes peut aussi servir à faire la guerre …
A l’heure où à moins de 50 jours des présidentielles, le nouveau Génie de Corrèze et vainqueur annoncé multiplie les promesses les plus folles pour un pays n’ayant pas connu un budget équilibré depuis 40 ans et officiellement en faillite virtuelle depuis la dernière élection …
Retour sur une nouvelle exception française que le monde entier nous envie …
A savoir celle de la rééducation périnéale et de l’équipement idoine pour nouvelles mamans remboursés par la Sécu …
Même si quelques esprits chagrins se permettent d’en mettre en cause tant les coûts faramineux que l’efficacité, la recordwoman du monde restant désespéremment russe et, si l’on en croit notre journal de référence, nos jeunes filles en fleur ignorant toujours tout du plaisir féminin …
Where Having It All Doesn’t Mean Having Equality
Katrin Bennhold
The NYT
October 11, 2010
PARIS — Could there be anything more French than this workout?
Weeks after giving birth, French women are offered a state-paid, extended course of vaginal gymnastics, complete with personal trainer, electric stimulation devices and computer games that reward particularly nimble squeezing. The aim, said Agnes de Marsac, a physiotherapist who runs such sessions: “Making love again soon and making more babies.”
Perineal therapy is as ubiquitous in France as free nursery schools, generous family allowances, tax deductions for each child, discounts for large families on high-speed trains, and the expectation that after a paid, four-month maternity leave mothers are back in shape — and back at work.
Courtesy of the state, French women seem to have it all: multiple children, a job and, often, a figure to die for.
What they don’t have is equality: France ranks 46th in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 gender equality report, trailing the United States, most of Europe, but also Kazakhstan and Jamaica. Eighty-two percent of French women aged 25-49 work, many of them full-time, but 82 percent of parliamentary seats are occupied by men. French women earn 26 percent less than men but spend twice as much time on domestic tasks. They have the most babies in Europe, but are also the biggest consumers of anti-depressants.
A recent 22-country survey by the Pew Research Center summed it up: three in four French people believe men have a better life than women, by far the highest share in any country polled.
“French women are exhausted,” said Valérie Toranian, editor-in-chief of Elle magazine in France. “We have the right to do what men do — as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman.”
The birthplace of Simone de Beauvoir and Brigitte Bardot may look Scandinavian in employment statistics, but it remains Latin in attitude. French women appear to worry about being feminine, not feminist, and French men often display a form of gallantry predating the 1789 revolution. Indeed, the liberation of French women can seem almost accidental — a byproduct of a paternalist state that takes children under its republican wings from toddler age and an obsession with natality rooted in three devastating wars.
“At the origin, family policy wasn’t about women, it was about Germany,” said Geneviève Fraisse, author of several books on gender history. “French mothers have conditions women elsewhere can only dream of. But stereotypes remain very much intact.”
Or, as the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy put it: “France is an old Gallic macho country.”
France crystallizes the paradox facing many women across the developed world in the early 21st century: They have more say over their sexuality (in France birth control and abortion are legal and subsidized), they have overtaken men in education and are catching up in the labor market, but few make it to the top of business or politics.
Only one of France’s top companies is run by a woman: Anne Lauvergeon is chief executive of the nuclear power giant Areva and mother of two young children.
Having those children is relatively easy in France, one reason Paris seems to teem with stylish career women with several offspring.
At 31, Fleur Cohen has four children and works full-time as a doctor at a Left Bank hospital. As she drops her youngest at nursery in stilettos and pencil skirt you would never guess that she gave birth only three months ago.
Child No. 4 wasn’t “planned,” Ms. Cohen said, but it doesn’t change all that much: Instead of three children, she now takes four on the Metro in the morning and drops them at the public school and subsidized hospital nursery. She joked that children are probably the best way to reduce your tax bill. Irrespective of income, parents get a monthly allowance of €123, or about $170, for two children, €282 for three children and an additional €158 for every child after that. Add to that tax deductions and other benefits, and the Cohens pretty much stopped paying tax after baby No. 3.
Across town, Ms. de Marsac snapped on a plastic glove, inserted two fingers between Clara Pflug’s legs and told her to think of the wings of a butterfly as she contracted her birth canal muscles. The French state offers mothers 10 one-on-one, half-hour sessions of perineal therapy to prevent post-pregnancy incontinence and organ descent — and to improve sex. Ten sessions of free abdominal exercises follow; Ms. de Marsac promises Ms. Pflug a “washboard tummy.”
French women have on average two babies, compared with 1.5 in the European Union overall.
Asked by foreign delegations about “le miracle français,” Nadine Morano, the feisty family minister and mother of three, says bluntly: “We spend the most money and we offer good childcare, it’s as simple as that. Our country understood a long time ago that to reconstruct a nation you need children.”
The 1870 defeat by a much more fertile Prussia led to first efforts to encourage childbirth. Then came the losses of World War I. Since 1920, when the gold Medal of the French Family — to honor mothers of eight or more — was created, expenditure on pro-breeding policies has blossomed. Last year, €97 billion, or 5.1 percent of gross domestic product — twice the E.U. average — went on family, childcare and maternity benefits.
Emblematic in this regard are the “écoles maternelles,” free all-day nursery schools set up a century after the French revolution in part, said Michelle Perrot, a historian, to stamp out the lingering influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
La Flèche houses the oldest école maternelle in France. At 8:30 a.m., parents drop off toddlers as young as two. Classes end at 4:30 p.m. but a free municipal service offers optional childcare until 6:30 p.m. Children are guaranteed a place in “maternelle” from the age of three and 99 percent of them attend.
Katy de Bresson, a single mother of two, called the enrollment of her son Arthur a “mini-revolution.” Free of all childcare costs, she could return to work full-time. “I am a lot happier and a lot more self-confident since then.”
Working mothers being the norm, Isabelle Nicolas, a nurse whose youngest son, Titouan, is in Arthur’s class and who quit work after his birth, feels pressure to return. “I spend a lot of time justifying myself,” she said. “In France you are expected to do it all.”
But ask any mother here whether school had changed the life of her husband and the answer is “non.”
“The school is called ‘maternelle’ for a reason,” said principal Anne Leguen. “In France, children are still considered to be the responsibility of mothers.”
Forty percent of French mothers undergo a career change within a year of giving birth, compared with 6 percent of men. Both parents have the right to take time off or reduce their hours until the child turns three — but 97 percent of those who do are women.
Women spend on average five hours and one minute per day on childcare and domestic tasks, while men spend two hours and seven minutes, according to the national statistics office Insee.
In Paris, Ms. Cohen’s husband is a doctor, too. But she bathes all four children, cooks and does the Saturday shopping — largely, she insists, by choice. “If I didn’t prepare food for my children, I would feel less like a mother,” she said.
At work, meanwhile, she plays down motherhood. She sneaks down to the hospital nursery to nurse her baby son, and tries to stay longer than her male colleagues in the evenings. Otherwise, “everyone will just assume that I’m leaving because of my children and that I am not committed to the job.”
A majority of medical graduates in France are female. Yet all 11 department heads in her hospital are men.
“French men have always been slow to give up power,” said Jean-François Copé, parliamentary leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right party, who is defending a bill to oblige companies to fill 40 percent of boardroom seats with women.
The French Republic made “equality” a founding principle, but women were allowed to vote for the first time only in 1945. Since a 1998 law obliged political parties to have an equal number of men and women candidates on their party lists, parties have tended to pay fines rather than comply.
Women leaders come under close scrutiny in what is after all the home of couture. Ms. Morano recalls being mocked on television for wearing the same jacket several times. Ms. Lauvergeon likened her outfit to “armor.”
Four pieces of equal pay legislation have passed since 1972. But in 2009, even childless women in their forties still earned 17 percent less than men.
“A patriarchal corporate culture,” is the main barrier facing women in French companies, according to Brigitte Grésy, author of a 2009 report on gender equality in the workplace.
France is Latin not just in its culture of seduction, but also in its late work hours, Ms. Grésy said. And the disproportional weight of a small number of male-dominated engineering schools in grooming the elites has done its part in excluding women from power. Xavier Michel, president of École Polytechnique, points out that the number of female students has risen tenfold from seven to 70 since he graduated in 1972 — but that leaves it at just 14 percent.
Simone Veil was 18 when French women first voted and 28 when she was allowed to open her own bank account. At 38, as health minister, she pushed through the legalization of abortion. “A lot has changed, but a lot hasn’t,” she says today. More comfort to her than many of the laws in recent years is the fact that more fathers push strollers through her neighborhood.
Ms. Fraisse, the philosopher, says more than two centuries after France got rid of the king as the father of the nation, it needs to get rid of the father as the king of the family. “We had one revolution,” she said, “now we need another one — in the family.”
Voir aussi:
Europe loses its cool
A pampered continent protests the rollback of its lavish welfare state
Charlie Gillis and Nancy MacDonald
Mc Clean’s
November 3, 2010
Hugo Christy doesn’t have to worry about his pension for 40 years. He hasn’t even started working yet. None of this has stopped the 21-year-old student from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris from joining thousands of striking workers in mass protests against the French government’s pension reforms.
Rolling strikes and nationwide demonstrations against the move all but brought the country to its knees, as people from all walks of life decried the hike in the French age of retirement from 60 to 62, and the age for full state pension from 65 to 67. Last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to call in riot police, who used tear gas and batons to clear key fuel depots and get gas flowing to service stations—more than a quarter had run dry. Strikes shut Marseille’s docks, and left many of the southern port city’s sidewalks filled with rotting garbage. More than 300 high schools were blockaded, and streets from Paris to Nice were flooded with youth and workers carrying drums and bullhorns, chanting slogans, staging sit-ins, and singing the Internationale, the socialist anthem. Children as young as 10 demanded their government withdraw its reforms, suggesting either remarkable awareness, or some early instruction by their parents in the art of dissent.
“It’s a question of fairness, of social justice,” declares Christy, who studies urban planning and expects to enter the civil service when he graduates. Those who worked a tough job, like bus drivers and miners, he adds, should be allowed to retire even earlier than 60—anything less would be “unfair.” And he views benefits like five-week vacations, a 35-hour workweek and early retirement as a kind of birthright, much as Canadians might view universal public schooling. Despite numerous warnings that the country’s cushy pension scheme has become unsustainable, the majority of French citizens seem to share his view: polls suggest support for the protests tops 70 per cent, despite the fact the disruptions were costing the public treasury a half-billion euros per day.
To Denis Rivier, an electronic technician from the Loire Valley town of La Talaudière, even the slightest concession on those entitlements would be “catastrophic,” setting French workers on a path back to the Industrial Revolution. Working conditions at the factory where the 58-year-old repairs circuit boards have already “radically degraded,” he claims. Where once he worked on a flexible schedule—coming in between 7 and 9 a.m., and heading home anywhere from 4:30 to 7 p.m., so long as he put in seven hours—Rivier now has to work a set shift. “All the leeway I had to organize my work life disappeared,” he says, adding that his employer, in an apparent cost-cutting move, has removed lockers where workers once stored their lunches and pinned up family photos. “Misery,” he concludes, “is returning to the working class.”
To Canadian ears, such complaints sound absurd. Shift work during tough economic times? Better than no work at all. Retiring at 62? We wish. But Rivier’s outrage typifies a denial of economic reality among average Europeans that seems to be deepening as their governments hurtle toward the financial abyss. In the past four weeks, workers in no less than 12 European countries have staged crippling strikes or protests in response to austerity measures almost no one disputes are necessary to shore up their nations’ wobbly finances. France’s month of unrest, with the possibility of more strikes to come, has taken place despite warnings that the country’s 80 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio threatens its economic future. In Spain, where the annual deficit now stands at 11 per cent of GDP, a 24-hour general strike on Sept. 29 brought the country to a standstill, with more planned in protest of a labour reform bill tabled by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. In Italy, thousands joined a march in Rome organized by labour, while Britain faced a growing backlash to budget measures that would see nearly 500,000 civil servants axed from the public payroll: an Oct. 19 protest against the cuts at Westminster came two weeks after rail workers staged a 24-hour strike over staffing levels that shut down London’s underground. This despite a $250-billion deficit in Britain that, measured against GDP, is third worst in the world.
All of this has taken place against the backdrop of Greece’s financial catastrophe—a lesson on the dangers of fiscal procrastination if ever there was one. Two weeks ago, striking civil servants in that country shut down schools and tax offices in an aftershock from violent spring demonstrations that saw rioters in Athens tear-gassed and three people killed by a Molotov cocktail. What the bureaucrats expected to accomplish wasn’t clear. Their country is unable to borrow on the open market, while a recent crackdown on tax evasion drew as much public anger as the government’s aggressive cost-cutting program. Even if their politicians wanted to keep paying civil servants, they couldn’t find the money.
The reaction has fuelled fears that desperately needed financial reforms will run up against a sort of collective blindness—a peculiarly European belief that the cherished welfare state could defy the cold math of weak economies and aging workforces. “To us, something like raising the retirement age seems like a pragmatic step,” says Timothy Smith, a history professor at Queen’s University and author of France in Crisis, a 2004 book arguing that the French model is collapsing. “But the French have invested so much hope and energy in their social welfare system that having to give any of that up provokes this sort of reaction,” he says. That reflex is born partly of genuine egalitarianism, he says, but it also reflects a long-standing suspicion of employment as an instrument of capitalism. “In France,” says Smith, “work is seen by many people as oppressive.”
The irony, of course, is that if you have a job, there are few better places to work than Western Europe. Consider France, where, weeks after giving birth, women are offered state-paid, one-on-one, extended courses in vaginal therapy. The training, known as la rééducation périnéale après accouchement, or “perineal retraining after childbirth,” includes a personal trainer known as a kinesitherapist, along with wands and electric devices meant to strengthen muscles in the birth canal. After vaginal re-education, French women are then offered extended courses in abdominal training, aimed at flattening their tummies. The state picks up the tab for that, too.
It’s the beginning of an exhaustive, heavily subsidized set of benefits that carries through until a child reaches young adulthood—all in the name of encouraging French women to have children. The program begins with a birth or adoption bonus, a four-month paid maternity leave, plus a basic allowance. Laws allow a woman to opt not to work until her child is three, and guarantees her a full-time job on her return. At that point, the child is eligible for state-funded daycare, which runs to kindergarten, and every fall, parents receive a grant for every child they return to school, amounting to $420 for children over 11 this year. They also receive a housing benefit, tax benefits, and discounts on public transit, cultural events and shopping. In the summer, children are entitled to subsidized, full-day summer camps with activities like trips to the museum, farms and pools along with three square meals (and snacks). For some parents, daily fees for the camps start at as little as 65 cents.
Similar, if less extensive benefits prevail throughout the Continent, with each country adding its unique selection of perks. Ailing Greeks can tap a public insurance program for spa therapy, which aims to heal via “curing waters” or “aerotherapy,” which exposes patients to changes in atmospheric pressure. Pregnant Swedes are entitled to prenatal leave if they do work that can be considered physically demanding, while Germans who fall ill get domestic nurses if no one at home can provide them with attention and care.
You might think this sort of generosity would flag in a stagnant economy, but benefit-minded public officials remain emboldened. In April, the EU declared tourism to be a “human right,” meaning students, retirees and low-income earners would have their travel subsidized. Among other things, officials envisioned sending Greeks and Italians to England to tour “archaeological and industrial sites” such as shuttered mines, factories and power plants—and vice versa. The scheme was inspired by a European Parliament program that sends the children of Brussels Eurocrats to the Italian Alps on ski holidays and to summer camps in France, Malta, Germany and Brighton—all courtesy of EU taxpayers.
Then, in July, a German police officer in Münster argued successfully that he deserved an extra week’s holiday per year to make up for the time it takes him to get dressed. Martin Schauder, 44, had complained that it takes him 15 minutes to put on his regulation undershirt, pants, belt, handcuffs, weapon and gas canister, overshirt, tunic, boots, gloves and kneepads (when on riot control), and another 15 minutes at the end of the day to take it all off again. The benefit may soon be available to the entire force.
Suffice to say, this notion of fairness comes at a price, and the bills are starting to pile up (France’s family benefit schemes last year alone cost $140 billion—or five per cent of its GDP—with over 40 per cent of subsidies going to middle-class and wealthy families). To pay them, governments will need either punishing spending cuts or tax hikes that will discourage business. Growth during this painful period of “deleveraging” in Europe’s largest economies could sink as low as one per cent, a prediction that last summer prompted Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, to fret publicly about a “lost decade” for the world’s advanced economies.
What’s more, people in certain countries have shown a troubling ability to duck the harsh economic medicine. In Greece, tax evasion is thought to be costing the government some $20 billion a year, as everyone from doctors to cab drivers takes cash and understates their incomes. Athens has promised to crack down, but few on the street put stock in the brave talk. “Everyday life will go on,” says Mirisa Antonopoulou, a 24-year-old financial auditor in Athens, noting that tax evasion and cronyism were open secrets long before the economic crisis. “Everybody’s making out like it’s the government’s fault. There’s enough blame to go around.”
Even if they do draw more cents on the tax dollar owed, governments still face the monumental problem of their aging populations, something that most have only begun to acknowledge. The challenge is most acute in France, where the average person spends 21 years of his life on pension—the highest of any country in the world. By 2050, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projections, there will be one person on benefits for every two who are of working age in France, compared to the current ratio of 1:4. When you consider that only 62 per cent of working-age French people are actually in the labour force, it’s not hard to imagine the crisis that lies in wait.
The tweak to the retirement age, therefore, is a “baby step,” says Michael Hodin, an adjunct senior fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in population aging issues. “I don’t think it’s even close to the sort of profound shifts that need to be made, both from a cultural and behavioural point of view and in terms of public policy,” he says. Since 1900, average life expectancy in Western Europe and the U.S. has nearly doubled, and now stands around 80. Everything from health care services to labour laws to pension structures will have to change, Hodin says.
The pension systems in countries like France, Germany, Greece and Italy, where public plans represent all or most of retirement savings, will be particularly vulnerable. At last count, pension spending in Germany amounted to 11 per cent of GDP. In Italy, it had reached 11.5 per cent; in Belgium, 12.2 per cent. In France, where it now tops 10.6 per cent, the demands of an aging population have the potential to drive up deficits another five per cent, according to Martine Durand, deputy director of the OECD’s employment, labour and social affairs branch—this in a country that hasn’t passed a surplus budget for 40 years. “Everybody agrees that reform is necessary,” said Durand recently. “Without reform now, our children and grandchildren will pay the price.”
An increase in productivity might ease some of this burden, generating more income that could then theoretically be taxed. But here, too, Europe’s culture of entitlement stands in the way. While the region’s most advanced economies produce almost as much per hour worked as the U.S. (the OECD benchmark), they lag far behind when annual production is measured on a per-person basis, suggesting those five-week holidays are dragging down economies. Germany, for example, produces only nine per cent less per hour than the U.S., but 25 per cent less per person; France makes 30 per cent less per capita, and Spain 33 per cent. This might be understandable were those countries less technologically advanced than America, or if they had lousy education systems. But the culprit in this case is the basket of benefits enjoyed by workers, and labour laws that prevent firms from laying off workers due to swings in the market.
The latter issue is vital, says Smith at Queen’s, because the rules meant to protect workers are discouraging companies from hiring in the first place. Fully one in four people in France who are fired, laid off or fail to get their contracts renewed take their employer to court under laws allowing them to contest the decision. “It takes an average of six months to get one of those actions resolved,” says Smith. “It’s a huge disincentive to hire, and it is the key problem facing France’s economy.”
The question now is whether people in the most financially strapped nations can be pried away from their established ideas about work and entitlement. With bond-raters baying at their door, Britons did elect a Conservative minority that promised to aggressively cut spending. Yet the Cameron government’s plan to slash $130 billion over the next five years has already encountered stiff resistance from unions and left-wing pressure groups. On the Continent, meanwhile, politicians appear willing only to tinker. Spain’s government announced a modest five per cent pay cut for all civil servants, while a bill to raise the country’s retirement age to 67 from 65 makes its way through parliament. Italy, whose 115 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio is one of the highest in the industrialized world, is planning to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65, while Germany is debating raising it by two years to 67. The Netherlands is considering only a one-year hike, to 66.
European leaders are no doubt mindful of the dangers of telling unpopular truths, or setting their gaze beyond the next election (in the mid-1990s, far-sighted reforms in France unleashed strikes that paralyzed the country for weeks and, ultimately, cost prime minister Alain Juppé his job). Still, there are recent signs that younger Europeans are turning away from statist orthodoxy. No group characterizes this nascent thinking better than Stop la Grève (Stop the Strike), a French movement whose leader, Olivier Vial, believes endless disruptions paint a “ridiculous and archaic” portrait of his country. “We can’t keep replaying this spectacle indefinitely,” says the 35-year-old university researcher.
There is another France, Vial insists, populated by younger adults “who understand the need to restore the country, and who want to work.” Only five of France’s 82 universities have been shut down by strikes, he points out, and some 70 per cent of students at the notorious leftist fortress, Université Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), voted last week against striking—aware, it seems, that the retirement reforms were in fact in their long-term interest. “We are the first generation who will not only have to finance our parents’ retirement, but also our grandparents’,” says Vial. “Without reform, we won’t have a retirement—not like the one the workers in the streets, who are close to retirement age, are going to have.”
Whether he and his contemporaries can get their message through is anyone’s guess. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron sees a flicker of hope that Europe might seriously shift course but, he adds, “this isn’t going to be easy at all.” It is the fourth year in a row, after all, that Western Europe has seen its cities tied up in strikes and blockades, over an issue as minor as bumping up retirement ages a couple of years. Smith, the Queen’s historian, figures younger people fight on, considering the success of past protests. “They want what their parents and grandparents had,” he says, “and that’s just the problem. They can’t have it, because there’s no way to pay for it.”
Périnée
Rééducation périnéale : du changement !
Propos recueillis par Isabelle Gravillon
Enfant Magazine
L’année 2009 a été celle d’une révision de la rééducation du périnée après l’accouchement. Au programme : lancement d’une étude scientifique pour déterminer quelles femmes ont vraiment besoin d’une rééducation et rédaction d’une charte de qualité pour la profession des rééducateurs.
Certains chiffres ne mettent pas le moral au beau fixe… A 40 ans, trois femmes sur dix souffrent de fuites urinaires quand elles font un effort, éternuent ou ont un fou rire. A 50 ans, c’est une sur deux qui est concernée par ces désagréments ou d’autres, comme une descente d’organes ou une absence de sensation lors des rapports sexuels.
Le responsable ? Un périnée mal en point. Pourtant, la rééducation périnéale pour les femmes venant d’accoucher est proposée et remboursée par la Sécurité sociale depuis 1985 !
Cette rééducation ne sert-elle à rien ? Le point avec Alain Bourcier*, physiothérapeute.
La France n’est-elle pas le seul pays au monde à proposer des séances de rééducation périnéale remboursées par la Sécurité sociale ?
C’est vrai, on peut même parler d’une exception française ! Or, nous effectuons autant d’interventions chirurgicales pour incontinence urinaire et prolapsus génital (descente d’organes) que dans les pays où cette rééducation périnéale systématique n’existe pas. A titre d’exemple, nous ne faisons pas mieux que les Anglo-Saxons qui, eux, ont opté pour la méthode Kegel : des exercices de contraction du périnée que l’on montre aux accouchées avant leur sortie et qu’elles font ensuite toutes seules chez elles.
La rééducation à la française serait donc inefficace ?
Nous avons des progrès à faire ! Le premier souci réside dans le manque de formation de certains professionnels pratiquant cette rééducation. Les femmes venant d’accoucher ont tendance à se rendre chez le kinésithérapeute ou la sage-femme résidant le plus près de chez elle, mais qui n’a pas forcément une immense pratique de cette rééducation. Il est temps que la profession s’organise et rédige une charte de qualité précisant les formations reconnues, les critères précis auxquels un rééducateur doit satisfaire. Et pourquoi pas, établisse une liste nationale de professionnels « labellisés ».
Les femmes ont-elles bien intégré le message de cette nécessaire rééducation périnéale ?
Oui. Quand on leur prescrit des séances, elles les font avec bonne volonté. Mais le problème est que certaines maternités continuent de ne pas prescrire cette rééducation. Et parmi les établissements qui le font, l’uniformité règne : 10 séances pour toutes les accouchées, quel que soit leur « profil ». Or, certaines femmes n’en ont pas besoin, alors que pour d’autres, il faudrait 20 à 30 séances !
Il existe en effet trois groupes de patientes :
1.Pour le premier : l’accouchement s’est très bien passé, le bébé pesait moins de 3,7 kg, pas d’utilisation de forceps, le périnée est tonique, aucune plainte concernant des fuites urinaires. Pour ces femmes (un tiers environ des accouchées), une rééducation périnéale est totalement inutile.
2.Deuxième groupe : l’accouchement a été très long, le bébé pesait plus de 3,7 kg, les forceps ont été utilisés, il y a eu des petites fuites pendant la grossesse maintenant disparues, le périnée n’est pas très tonique. Pour ces jeunes mamans, la rééducation n’est pas indispensable, mais il est en revanche utile qu’elles pratiquent chez elles régulièrement des exercices de contraction du périnée.
3.Troisième groupe : les femmes ayant des fuites urinaires, un prolapsus (une sensation de pesanteur dans le bas-ventre, l’impression qu’une petite « boule » sort du vagin), ou des difficultés sexuelles (douleurs ne provenant pas de l’épisiotomie, absence de sensations). Celles-ci – et celles-ci seulement ! – ont besoin d’une rééducation périnéale qui pourra dépasser les 10 séances, à pratiquer auprès de professionnels qualifiés.
Ce message sur la rééducation périnéale est nouveau… Comment le faire passer ?
Nous avons besoin de données scientifiques sérieuses pour faire évoluer les pratiques. Le Pr Jean-Louis Benifla, responsable de la maternité de l’hôpital Trousseau, a lancé une étude en 2009. Il s’agit d’étudier différents groupes d’accouchées pratiquant différents types de rééducation (avec un professionnel, toutes seules à la maison) ou pas de rééducation. Les résultats obtenus permettront de préciser les bonnes modalités de la rééducation postnatale, de savoir précisément pour quelles femmes elle sera utile.
En attendant cette « remise à plat », que conseiller aux femmes qui viennent d’accoucher ?
De ne surtout pas négliger la rééducation périnéale si elles ont des fuites urinaires, des difficultés sexuelles ou les signes d’une descente d’organes.
De ne pas se rendre chez n’importe quel professionnel : une rééducation mal faite équivaut à ne rien faire ! Mieux vaut demander conseil à son gynécologue pour qu’il les oriente vers un professionnel vraiment spécialisé, quitte à ce qu’elles soient obligées de faire une demi-heure de transport…
Et puis ces femmes dont le périnée a été abîmé doivent savoir qu’elles restent à « risque » dans l’avenir. Une fois leur rééducation terminée, il est essentiel qu’elles entretiennent régulièrement leur périnée par des exercices de contractions. Il existe également des appareils d’autorééducation périnéale : des électrostimulateurs sans fil. Prescrits par le médecin et remboursés à 65 % par la Sécurité sociale, ils permettent d’exercer son périnée, chez soi. Il suffit de placer la sonde ultralégère dans le vagin et celle-ci émet des impulsions indolores qui font travailler le muscle. Attention, ces appareils ne remplacent en aucun cas la rééducation initiale !
Toutes les méthodes de rééducation périnéale se valent-elles ?
Oui, du moment que les professionnels qui les pratiquent sont qualifiés ! Il existe trois techniques :
La rééducation manuelle : grâce à un toucher vaginal, le praticien oppose une résistance aux muscles du périnée contre laquelle la patiente doit lutter. Il cible les résistances selon les parties à tonifier et l’évolution de la récupération musculaire.
La stimulation électrique : une sonde émettant des petits courants électriques indolores est introduite dans le vagin. Le muscle se contracte « tout seul ».
La rééducation par bio feed-back : une sonde est introduite dans le vagin et la patiente doit contracter volontairement ses muscles, sans stimulation électrique. Le résultat de ses contractions apparaît sous forme de courbes sur un écran. Elle peut ainsi apprendre à sélectionner les « bons » muscles, ceux qui doivent travailler.
Un même professionnel peut utiliser plusieurs de ces techniques.
* Responsable de l’unité de rééducation pelvi périnéale du service d’urologie de l’hôpital Tenon à Paris, il est également responsable du CERP (Centre d’explorations et de rééducation périnéale) à Paris.
Voir également:
Comment les Français ont voulu rééduquer mon vagin
Pompes vaginales et jeux vidéo, une Américaine à Paris raconte son expérience de la rééducation périnéale.
Claire Lundberg
Claire Lundberg est une écrivain anciennement new-yorkaise, qui vit désormais à Paris.
Traduit par Bérengère Viennot
La semaine dernière, j’ai commencé à me rééduquer le vagin. Laissez-moi m’expliquer: j’habite en France. Peu de temps après que mon mari et moi sommes arrivés à Paris, je suis tombée enceinte, ce qui fut un soulagement puisque j’avais enfin un prétexte physiologique légitime pour engraisser, autre que tous ces pains au chocolat.
Quand j’ai accouché de ma fille en novembre dernier, mon mari et moi avons passé cinq jours à la maternité de la Clinique Leonardo Da Vinci aux frais de la princesse, où nous avons découvert que les repas d’hôpitaux comprennent fromage et dessert et que dans le cadre de mon traitement post-partum, on me prescrirait entre 10 et 20 séances de la rééducation périnéale.
C’est un genre de kinésithérapie visant à remuscler le périnée, vagin inclus, et c’est l’une des pierres angulaires du suivi postnatal français. Deux mois après la naissance de notre fille, j’ai pris mon courage à deux mains et je suis partie enseigner de nouveaux tours à mon vagin.
Hum, j’ai l’impression que c’est le genre de papier où le mot «vagin» va beaucoup apparaître. Je suis consciente que la terminologie anatomique peut en gêner certains —comme cet ami qui m’a suppliée lors de mon 6e mois de grossesse: «Tu pourrais s’il te plaît arrêter de prononcer le mot utérus?»
Mais pas de panique! J’ai cherché sur Google les euphémismes d’usage courant pour désigner le vagin, et j’incorporerai les plus inoffensifs au fil du texte.
Les Français, un tantinet plus blasés que les Américains quant au corps féminin
Comme vous pouvez l’imaginer si vous avez déjà vu une comédie romantique gauloise, les Français sont un tantinet plus blasés que nous autres Américains en matière de corps féminin. Je m’en suis rendue compte dès ma première visite chez le gynécologue ici.
«Enlevez votre pantalon et vos sous-vêtements», m’a-t-il intimé d’une voix lasse en levant à peine les yeux de son ordinateur. Heu attends, il ne va pas sortir? Me-suis-je indignée. Il n’y a pas de petite blouse en papier?
Juste avant de me rendre compte à quel point cette petite blouse en papier est complètement idiote, après tout. Oui, enlevez juste votre pantalon et vos dessous. On est tous des adultes et ce n’est pas la première fois qu’on passe par là; on ne va pas couler une bielle pour une malheureuse exhibition de ma féminité.
À la fin de ma grossesse, mon corps avait tellement changé que j’avais jeté ma pudeur américaine par-dessus les moulins et que j’étais devenue une vraie pro. «J’enlève mon pantalon et ma culotte maintenant?» était devenu un automatisme, même lorsque je n’avais rendez-vous que pour un simple monitoring.
Tout avait tellement changé, je n’étais même plus sûre que ce corps soit encore à moi —enfin au milieu en tout cas. Il était clair que ce ventre et ces nénés ne pouvaient pas être les miens, alors qu’importait qui les voyait?
La rééducation, pour que votre vagin redevienne votre ami
Et puis vinrent les suites de couche. Le milieu de mon corps s’était remis en place, mais avec des seins encore plus gros et plus fermes! (D’accord ils fuyaient bien un peu de temps en temps mais peu importe). Mais qu’est-ce qui se passait en bas, là, dans mes, heu, parties intimes?
Ma vieille copine autrefois confortable et familière était devenue une étrangère, ou ce genre de parent qu’on ne voit qu’une fois par an pendant les vacances. Notre badinage facile venait d’être brutalement remplacé par une interaction forcée et manquant de naturel.
La rééducation est la solution française à ce problème, remboursée par la sécurité sociale depuis 1985. La France est l’un des seuls pays à sponsoriser un tel programme, et l’idée derrière cela, c’est que…eh bien, il n’y en a pas qu’une justement, mais plusieurs.
Vu que c’est la France, tout le monde veut que vous puissiez reprendre les relations sexuelles avec votre mari le plus tôt possible (vous feriez mieux de vous remuscler la zone vite fait avant qu’il ne se lasse de votre convalescence et ne se dégotte une maîtresse!)
D’un autre côté, le gouvernement veut aussi s’assurer que vous pourrez avoir un autre enfant facilement et sans complications; grâce en partie aux incitations officielles, le taux de natalité français est désormais le 2e plus élevé de l’UE, avec 2,1 enfants par femme.
Et puis, bon, mais c’est quoi le problème là en bas? Est-ce que je vais vraiment faire quelques gouttes de pipi à chaque éternuement pour le restant de mes jours?
Visite chez le kiné avec son bébé
La première étape dans ces séances de musculation du yoni est un long entretien avec votre kinésithérapeute. On vous demande dans quel état sont vos muscles à cet endroit, s’il y a eu des complications à l’accouchement, si vous avez des problèmes d’incontinence et autres mystérieuses questions sur la descente d’organes, objet d’une véritable paranoïa chez les Français.
Et puis, vous l’aviez deviné— arrive l’instant «enlevez votre pantalon et vos sous-vêtements». Comme ces séances ont généralement lieu pendant le congé maternité, la plupart des kinés permettent de venir avec son bébé.
Vous vous retrouvez donc à moitié nue, une femme inconnue en train de vous sonder le minou pendant que votre bibou vous regarde depuis sa poussette, ce qui ajoute une toute nouvelle dimension de bizarrerie à l’ensemble.
Une petite partie de Pac-chatte?
Il existe deux méthodes pour la rééducation: manuelle et par biofeedback, et la plupart des kinés associent les deux. La première, comme son nom l’indique, consiste pour le praticien à insérer deux doigts dans votre abricot et à vous demander de faire une série d’exercices conçus pour vous donner un meilleur contrôle de vos muscles.
Par exemple, pouvez-vous contracter le vagin et attirer ses doigts vers l’intérieur? Vous trouverez peut-être cela horriblement gênant, surtout après, quand elle vous assène que «c’est assez faible» et qu’il va vous falloir plus de 10 séances.
La méthode du biofeedback est un peu moins humiliante mais un peu plus effrayante, dans la mesure où elle nécessite d’acheter une «sonde» ou (comme l’indique l’emballage) un rééducateur vaginal électronique. Une sonde c’est un petit godemiché hérissé d’électrodes qu’un kiné vous insère dans le bonbon, avant de le connecter à un ordinateur portable qui enregistre la force de vos contractions internes.
Vous pouvez voir sur l’écran la force avec laquelle vos muscles se contractent et même jouer à de petits jeux vidéo en utilisant la sonde comme un joystick. J’ai fait une course de voitures lors de ma dernière séance, et une amie à moi a fait une partie de ce que je ne peux qu’appeler le Pac-chatte.
Pompes de berlingot
J’ai terminé ma dernière séance avec une série de pompes très profitables où il fallait que je contracte mes muscles à moitié, puis complètement, puis à moitié, puis plus du tout. J’étais complètement nulle. Ma fille, qui a maintenant 3 mois, est en train d’apprendre la coordination main-œil, et lutte pour agripper un jouet placé devant elle.
J’ai tout à fait compris ce qu’elle peut ressentir quand j’ai essayé de faire obéir mon berlingot; je ne me souvenais pas avoir jamais tenté de faire volontairement bouger ces muscles-là. Tout ça m’a fait m’esclaffer, de ce rire où se mêlent la gêne, l’absurdité et le désespoir, et que je me surprends à émettre sans arrêt en France (je suis sûre que les Allemands ont un mot composé à rallonge pour ça).
C’était si difficile et à la fois si ridicule —mais qu’est-ce que je fichais les fesses à l’air dans cet immeuble de bureaux haussmannien à écouter cette Française me répéter en boucle de respirer et de serrer, «soufflez … et contractez!»?
Des séances aussi ridicules qu’efficaces
Mais vous savez quoi? Malgré la gêne qu’elles suscitent parfois, ces séances fonctionnent vraiment. Il n’existe pas d’études très complètes sur le sujet, mais celles qui ont été menées révèlent que la rééducation réduit de façon significative l’incontinence et les douleurs pelviennes neuf mois après l’accouchement.
Honnêtement, je suis ravie qu’un professionnel de santé se soit inquiété de ce qui se passe dans ma culotte. Les publications américaines et canadiennes se moquent de la rééducation périnéale qu’elles considèrent comme l’un des plus criants exemples de la complaisance de l’État-providence français, mais à ma connaissance, aux États-Unis nous ne faisons absolument rien pour aider les femmes à retrouver la forme après un accouchement.
La femme américaine laissée seule avec son vagin
La femme américaine passe un examen de santé six semaines après son accouchement, et si elle n’a pas de problème grave, elle repart avec l’autorisation de reprendre les relations sexuelles. Si elle a de la chance, son médecin ou sa sage-femme lui rappellera de faire ses exercices de Kegel, mais sans la guider beaucoup.
Et pendant ce temps, en tout cas selon l’expérience de beaucoup de mes amies, elle peut souffrir de toute une variété de symptômes qui, sans être graves d’un point de vue médical, sont pour le moins ennuyeux, gênants et étranges, et pas franchement propices à remettre sa vie sexuelle sur les rails.
Le «rajeunissement vaginal» facultatif par chirurgie plastique est en augmentation aux États-Unis, mais cette reconstruction chirurgicale est principalement esthétique et ne prête pas ou peu d’attention au retour de la sensation ou du contrôle des muscles de la femme.
Ce manque d’attention typiquement américain au corps de la parturiente est notre version à nous de la blouse interconfessionnelle ou du mot «vajayjay» [utilisé par Oprah Winfrey pour ne pas dire «vagin»]; nous nous couvrons les yeux et faisons comme s’il n’y avait rien à cet endroit-là, jusqu’à ce qu’il devienne impossible de continuer à l’ignorer.
Il est bien possible, d’un autre côté, que la rééducation périnéale me donne bien plus d’informations sur ma bonbonnière —ou, comme je préfère l’appeler, mon vagin— que je ne l’aurais souhaité. Mais une fois la gêne initiale passée, je trouve que je me sens plus à l’aise avec mon corps post-accouchement. On verra bien si ça dure.
La sécurité sociale finance aussi ici des séances de «rééducation abdominale» qui débutent après la rééducation périnéale. Elles visent officiellement à aider à renforcer les abdos en cas de faiblesse ou après une césarienne, mais elles ont pour effet secondaire de donner «un meilleure aspect du ventre.»
Eh oui les filles, je fais des pompes financées par le gouvernement pour retrouver la ligne avant le retour des maillots de bain! C’est la France, bien sûr.
NDT: tous les termes en italiques étaient en français dans la version originale.