"Women have to beg for their money"

This Tuesday, January 5 marked the first trip of 2021 of President Emmanuel Macron. The latter devoted it to alimony, going to the Family Allowance Fund in Tours. In his sights, a reform which, according to him, will make it possible to fight against the 30 to 40% of unpaid or irregular maintenance payments each year. The first victims of these irregularities? Women, the traditional functioning of heterosexual families driving this scourge. "After a divorce or a termination of PACS, the standard of living of women drops on average by 20% against 3% for men", explain Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière, sociologists and authors of the book The gender of capital: how the family reproduces inequalities. This specifically female impoverishment is often interpreted as the consequence of the "economic dependence" of women, who earn on average 42% less than their partners. " However, women work more than men when you take domestic chores into account.

What is the government planning to do to fight unpaid support payments? And, above all, is it enough? Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière answer us.

At the origins of the reform, women in struggle

The questioning of the unpaid support claim process is not new. In 2018, many single mothers of the yellow vests movement demanded new measures, in order to reduce their administrative burdens. "There is no doubt that the movement of yellow vests and the place that single mothers have taken in it have contributed to making the problem of the economic precariousness of single mothers unavoidable", explain Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière. However, according to Émilie Biland, author of Governing privacy, published in 2019 by Editions de l'ENS, which investigated the genesis of support payment recovery systems, the pressure on the subject is earlier. "These devices were relaunched in the early 2010s on the initiative of senior officials who were personally aware of these issues., confirm Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière, but also thanks to the emergence of groups such as "Abandon de famille – Zero Tolerance", which regularly challenge the public authorities on these issues ",

This fight dates, therefore, and was structured slowly but surely, until it appeared among the subjects of the Great National Debate of 2019. Then convince the current government: since January 1, 2021, a new public support service has entered in force to facilitate their payment. Now, to best solve the problem, it is CAF which will serve as an intermediary. Instead of leaving the parent (most often, the mother) to fend for themselves in the administrative task, it is the CAF which will claim the amount of maintenance due each month and subsequently pay it to the beneficiary parent. Thus, if the other parent does not pay, it is the CAF which claims the due.

Why is this reform insufficient?

Unfortunately, we can evoke a "trompe-l'oeil recovery of pensions", according to Emilie Biland, cited by Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière. The two researchers insist on the untenable position of "custodial parents", usually mothers. "They can ask that the pension be collected and paid by CAF, that the CAF is responsible for recovering unpaid pensions, that the CAF pays them the family support allowance as a temporary replacement for the unpaid pension. (115 € / month, on condition of not being in a couple). This way of approaching the problem of unpaid pensions is part of the continuity of the place that our law and our justice assigns to mothers after separations: a beggar's position. "

The attempt at improvement seems laudable, therefore, but the mental burden placed on mothers remains the same, because they are not exempt from this administrative headache. "Because they have custody of the children, it is the mothers who must go to court to ask for a pension", insist the specialists. Fathers, for their part, adopt this position which is often observed during hearings: they "an offer", they "grant" a pension for their ex-spouse "which provides most of the care for children and yet finds itself indebted for this generosity", explain Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière, before adding: "If fathers do not want to pay, it is up to custodial mothers to find the remedies, sometimes extremely complex and costly, to obtain their due. Lone mothers must therefore keep children, have a job to survive and still find the time to '' initiate procedures, chain administrative procedures. For CAF to collect the pension, for example, an enforceable pension writ must have been issued (by a judge, by an act of a lawyer , by CAF) and that this act provides for the use of this intermediation service. " Not to mention the disadvantages that this device could present for single-parent families, because it risks being"little mobilized by those who would be entitled".
Whatever the configuration of the fireplace, one point remains clear according to the researchers: "Women remain in the position of demanders, financially dependent, to which the family institution and its legal framework assign them, despite their contribution to economic life, market and non-market."

What better options for real equality?

While these new measures by Emmanuel Macron’s government remain insufficient, other solutions could nevertheless be considered. "One could imagine that it is the insolvent fathers who must take the necessary steps to obtain a benefit allowing them to pay the contribution to the maintenance of their children. Or that the deduction of support payments is made directly at the source, for example the Public Treasury, with an automatic revaluation each year ", develop Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière. Indeed, some countries are already implementing these procedures. Quebec, for example, served as a model for the promoters of the current reform. But we can see a real difference, because "The intermediation system has been implemented by a dedicated agency on a binding basis for all alimony, without the need for the parties (in fact the mothers) to request it."

Moreover, one point has still not been mentioned in the new reform proposed by the government. However, it remains essential, because it participates neither more nor less in the control of the intimate life of women. "Mothers who receive the family support allowance from CAF lose it if they get back together again, remind us of Sybille Gollac and Céline Bessière. They are therefore supposed to ask their new spouse to participate in the care of their children! It helps the state control the sexuality of women, who are currently condemned to be financially dependent either on the state or on their spouses. " There remains a long work to free them.