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French feminists are taking aim at Justice Minister Rachida Dati, who went back to work this week just five days after giving birth, saying she is setting a bad example.
Smiling in a black suit and high heels, the 43-year-old minister attended a Cabinet meeting on Thursday at the Elysee presidential palace on the same day that she walked out of a Paris clinic clutching daughter Zohra.
"Pregnancy is not an illness," said Georges-Fabrice Blum, the vice-president of the French gynaecologists' association, who said there were no ill effects from a quick return to work.
But women's groups in France disagreed.
"This is scandalous," said Maya Sturduts from the National Collective for the Rights of Women.
"Employers can now use this to put pressure on women", especially during the current tough economic times when employers may be looking for excuses to cut staff, she said.
Women in France are guaranteed by law 16 weeks of paid maternity leave of which 10 weeks are usually taken after the baby's birth.
But the French labour code does not apply to ministers like Dati.
Women's rights activist Florence Montreynaud, a mother of four, said she was "shocked" by Dati's decision to go back to work so quickly and stressed that women needed rest after delivery. She compared Dati to working women in the 1920s who "gave birth in the factories" and lamented that her decision would exacerbate the divide between "superwomen and wimps" in the workforce.
Marie-Pierre Martinez, the secretary-general of the Planned Parenthood Association, said Dati "had no choice" but to go back to work to defend her standing in France's male-dominated politics.
"Absence is a way of being kept out of the loop," said Martinez, who noted that Dati makes no secret of the fact that she is ambitious.
