According to the Guardian, the protest’s organizers, feminist newsletter Les Glorieuses, write on their event page that if women were being paid as much as men “they could stop working on November 7 at 16.34.” There are currently around five thousand people on the Facebook invite saying they will attend, with calls for demonstrations to take place in Place de la République after the walk out, as well as outside of Paris, in Lyons and Nantes.
A co-founder of Les Glorieuses, Rebecca Amsellem, told La Parisienne that they were inspired by the protests in Iceland that took place in late October, during which women workers walked out at 2:38 pm to demonstrate against the wage inequality in their country. She says, “It is neither a class nor a political movement. I just wanted to raise awareness on the social networks by copying the Icelandic example. I never thought it would take off as it has.”
According to International Business Times, France has an unadjusted gender pay gap of 14.3 percent, with women earning 85.7 cents on the dollar.
La Parisienne also spoke with Minister of Women’s Rights, Laurence Rossignol, who seems to be in favor of the action, saying, “When women appear, they make visible what is invisible. When they say their outrage and raise a collective indignation even greater, I support it.”
