"Politics is all show": in a women's café in a working-class neighborhood!

As the presidential election approaches, SHE sets out to meet women for our series “Elles font la France”. In the Fives district of Lille, a solidarity café, 100% female, is trying to hold on, despite the Covid and the end of subsidies. Here, the philosophy is: “local feminism” and “citizen politics”. 

“Well, I don't think Fatma will come… She's having trouble getting up at the moment. Ratiba tries to keep smiling as she pours coffee at the table. It's 10 a.m. and on this Thursday morning in January, Dorianne, Maï and Catherine are frowning: their "second home" is threatened with closure for lack of subsidies. "I may have aimed too high in my ambitions for this place...", sighs Ratiba. When she opened Chez Djouheur (named after her mother) in 2018, she wanted to "make room for women in society". Or at least, in Lille Fives, her neighborhood, which she considers plagued by poverty, religious extremism and drugs. Because far from the TV sets, Ratiba and the others are confronted with the issues that politicians love to seize on. In a few years, they say, they have seen all the surrounding businesses replaced by “front kebabs and barbers”, which they say cover the “omnipresent” drug trade.