New Prime Minister Speaks -- Edith Cresson Attacks Sexism In French Politics

PARIS - As if anticipating the inevitable rumors and whisperings that would accompany her appointment as the first woman prime minister of France, Edith Cresson said in an interview published last week, "Not one woman is elected without the explanation being heard that she really got the post because she slept with so-and-so or so-and-so. Unfortunately, we are still there."

Cresson was named prime minister by President Francois Mitterrand Wednesday after the resignation of Prime Minister Michel Rocard. But before she even could move her files into the Hotel Matignon, official residence of the French prime minister, the rumor campaign that she predicted had already begun.

Opposition politician Francois D'Aubert charged that her appointment was "Pompadourian" - referring to the Marquise de Pompadour, known as "the favorite" and the mistress of King Louis XV. Cresson's appointment revived widespread gossip that she once had an affair with Mitterrand, with whom she has had a long, close political relationship. Cresson and Mitterrand are both married.

But rather than ignore the rumors, which popped up in her first television interview yesterday, Cresson confronted them directly. Opposition gadfly D'Aubert, she charged, is "one of those who thinks the whole world lives in a boudoir."

With a broad, defiant smile, Cresson, an engineer and economist, added: "Possibly I am the `favorite,' but I am the `favorite' of my voters."

Cresson, 57, is known as a tough political campaigner. In addition to being an elected member of the National Assembly, she is the popular mayor of Chatellerault, a city in southwest France.

Cresson's quick counterattack is likely to defuse the rumors relatively quickly. Having served four times previously as a minister in government (agriculture, industry, external trade and European affairs), Cresson has an established reputation that should shield her from future allegations of favoritism, even as she assumes her higher-profile post.

But the episode highlights a conspicuous inequality in French politics: When it comes to male politicians, private relations and sexual activities are considered strictly off limits. However, as the Cresson appointment has shown, the rules for women in French politics are different.

French male politicians, for example, were universally aghast during the 1988 campaign for the U.S. presidency when then-Sen. Gary Hart's sex life became a central issue in the campaign. Nothing like that, they said could happen in France, where the private and the public scrupulously are separated.

Cresson, whose doctoral dissertation is about the state of women in a rural setting, has especially strong feelings regarding male prejudice against women in French politics. When she was a minister in Rocard's government, she was excluded from the working breakfasts at the Matignon Palace.

"I don't regret at all not going to the breakfasts," she told journalist Catherine Nay, author of two books on Mitterrand, in an interview for the women's business magazine Contemporaine published last week. "I never asked to go." She described the breakfasts as typical male "bragging sessions" among politicians with presidential ambitions.

At the time the interview was conducted several weeks ago, Cresson was out of government in private business, with apparently no idea that Mitterrand would ask her to become prime minister.

In the interview, she strongly criticized French political parties, including her own Socialist Party, for sexist attitudes. "In a party, a woman is always in a position of inferiority. You must have noticed that when she climbs the podium to speak, you can't hear her" over the sound of "all the men talking to each other - it's repulsive."

However, she reserved special respect for Mitterrand, 74, whom she described as "the only male politician who is truly concerned with promoting women in the national interest."