Pas Encore — French Women Are Sick of Waiting for Their Beer Revolution — Good Beer Hunting

Sep 17, 2023

"It's just an idea, but could we think about writing a press release or an open letter? To officially ask for concrete actions, on behalf of women and breweries in need of training?"

Last March, Garlonn Kergourlay, a brewing consultant and the leader of the French chapter of the Pink Boots Society, contacted me and four other women: Carol-Ann Cailly, a beer sommelier and co-founder of the women-only association Buveuses de Bières; Odile Bondier, founder and brewer at Odile t’en Brasse; Estelle Durand, a freelance beer expert; and Deborah Chesne, a former brewer. She was reaching out, she said, because of how eager we all were to continue pushing the French beer industry towards being more equitable.

Just a couple of days earlier, Le Syndicat National des Brasseurs Indépendants, or SNBi—a French brewers’ union—had announced that it was changing its name to Le Syndicat National des Brasseries Indépendantes, after asking its members to approve the more inclusive term. ("Brasseur" means "male brewer" in French, whereas "brasserie" means "brewery.") Happily, 94% of its members voted yes.

It was a great first step, but it wasn't enough: Women and people of minority backgrounds working in France's beer industry were looking for real change. More than just words. Actions to protect workers and customers in the brewhouse, and acknowledgments of their contributions and skill. Even this positive step was marred: As the former managing director of SNBi from 2017–2018, Kergourlay wanted the SNBi to acknowledge that its name change had come about only because women in beer had long lobbied for it. Unfortunately, the organization did not share that message when the measure passed.

"I didn't want to be alone in this, as an ex-employee of SNBi," Kergourlay says. "I didn't want to be accused of holding a grudge against them. It's not just about them anyway."

An open letter, we agreed, felt like the perfect way to respond—and to share our broad requests with brewers’ unions, breweries, beer festival organizations, professional associations, and everyone working in beer. Six of us wouldn't be enough to have an impact, though, so we wanted to find other women and non-binary people who were willing to sign our letter. It wasn't hard to find signatories. "It's about damn time," most of them said.

Together, we called for more inclusive naming conventions from beer-related organizations; the end of beers with discriminatory and degrading names and visuals; training courses for breweries and beer professionals regarding equity and inclusion; and a clear procedure for companies to deal with issues of violence, discrimination, and harassment. We wrote it with the hope that March 25, 2022, the day we planned to publish our letter, might be our May 11, 2021—the day that brewer Brienne Allan started an unplanned #MeToo reckoning, opening up a discussion on Instagram about sexual harassment, violence, and discrimination in the U.S. beer industry.

But that's not what happened.

On March 25, our open letter was ready with 61 signatures. I felt overwhelmed and excited as I pressed the button to publish it. Soon after, we doubled the number of signatures, to 123. Our "bière inclusive" visual began to appear across French craft beer social media, as most women who signed the letter shared it on Facebook or Instagram. A few breweries, beer influencers, and bloggers reposted it, thanking us for our effort.

This was finally our time to be heard, to take action. We showed up in numbers. And we were almost totally ignored.

The brewers’ unions whose attention we were seeking failed to acknowledge our letter. We had few responses from breweries and beer businesses. Everywhere we turned, we were met with radio silence. "Does the French beer industry care about women at all?" Cailly had asked on her blog, Hoppy Hours, the year before, and now it surfaced in our minds once again.

That's because this wasn't the first time women working in beer tried to speak up but ended up getting ignored. Prior to the 2021 Paris Beer Festival, Cailly had gathered testimonies of sexism and sexual violence in the industry. She received stories of rape, of women being ostracized after asking for a raise, and sexual harrasment in the brewhouse or out at bars. We worked together on a conference for the festival where some of the testimonies were shared anonymously, and tried to give advice on what to do (as a victim and as a brewery) when faced with sexual harrassment and violence—you can hear it here.

"When I complain about sexist labels, misogynistic jokes, people come to me to explain that, ‘It's nothing. There are more serious things.’ When we talk about these ‘more serious things,’ and I’m speaking of actual criminal offenses, the silence we face is deafening," Cailly wrote on her blog after the conference. "Unions, professional associations, companies: No one asked for more information, sought to go further, or took the trouble to thank us, speakers and witnesses, for working on this subject which concerns their industry as well."

Kergourlay said she was sorry that they didn't react to our letter, either. "I was really waiting to start a conversation with brewers’ unions and also with beer festival organizations, because they can reach lots of people, our voices could’ve been more heard," she says. Durand feels similarly: "What disappointed me the most was the lack of reaction from brewers’ associations; there's no desire to talk about women in beer." And Bondier recalls a brewer telling her that since the SNBi changed its name, "We can go back to working on real problems." Sexism is solved, don't bother asking for anything else! And don't even start with racism, transphobia, or ableism, as those issues simply don't exist at all.

The disappointments continued. The Brasseurs de France—the other brewers’ union in our industry—had told me it was going to update its code of ethics but wouldn't give me the opportunity to read it; changing the group's name was out of the question. And though the SNBi shared a document about harassment with its members, made by the group's ethics committee representative and validated by its legal committee, it, too, refused to let me read it, though one of its members shared it with me. The document defined what the law says about harassment, reminded breweries about their legal obligations, and shared advice on how to react to abuse and harassment as both the victim and as the employer.

This last part got my attention, as some of the document's examples ran contrary to the advice of victims’ associations, and even the recommendations of the French Ministry of Labor. "The first thing to do when a person makes an inappropriate gesture or statement towards you is to express your disapproval to them immediately, in order to discourage them from continuing to repeat these actions," it read, disregarding the balance of power that often exists between victim and abuser. Next up, victim blaming: "The person at fault could mistake your silence for an invitation to start over," it continued. None of the organization's representatives—including managing director Sonia Rigal; David Hubert, the ethics committee representative; and the president, Jean-François Drouin—responded to my questions about these points.

The question we’re now asking ourselves as signatories of the open letter is: Why? Why do we keep getting ignored and rebuffed?

The silence feels particularly stark when we look across the Channel to the U.K., or overseas to the U.S. Even if the beer industries in both of those countries have plenty of work to do, at least the conversations got started; at least stories were shared; at least certain people had to take responsibility for their actions. In France, it's still a non-topic—and it's not because it doesn't happen here.

Amélie Tassin, the founder of Beers Without Beards, a group for women and non-binary beer lovers, has been working in Scotland as a marketing consultant for breweries since 2018. She signed the open letter "as an act of sorority," she says, as she's still very attached to her home country.

"I’m ashamed, as a French woman, to see what's happening in France," she says. In her work, she has experienced real culture shocks when working with her home country. "I work with U.K. breweries and sometimes have to organize events for them in France. I find it extremely difficult that I have to explain why we won't make a partnership with certains breweries or venues." One partner didn't understand why she refused to have an event take place at BrewDog's Paris bar. "The matter is always brushed aside. They say, ‘It's just rumors, and it's not really important to pay attention to that kind of thing.’"

The craft beer revolution is only around 10 years old in France—young, especially compared to neighboring countries like Italy and Spain. But it's grown quickly: There were 504 craft breweries across the country in 2013, and more than 2,300 today. And yet, it can still feel like our scene is searching for its identity.

In the meantime, France has taken ample inspiration from U.S. breweries. But it's also imported some of the worst aspects of American craft beer culture. Just like elsewhere, we have our hype-centric Untappd ticking, and we will happily put some guy with a beard and a massive ego on a pedestal simply because he knows how to brew a decent IPA. That's some lazy appropriation, Tassin says with a laugh.

"I remember a French brewer who refused to take part in a tap takeover I organized in Manchester, because he had to share it with another brewery," she says. "He said that he was too good to share the space, even though no one knew who he was in the U.K."

To understand the sexism that infects French beer, it's also necessary to understand the misogyny that abounds in French culture and public life. "Women in France have long held unequal footing in society, and the country still falls far behind other Western democracies when it comes to gender equality," as Politico notes.

Though the #MeToo movement reached us across a range of fields and industries—cinema, sport, music, journalism, and politics—it had a slow start, and its impact has been questionable. Sandra Muller, the journalist who started #BalanceTonPorc in 2017 (our equivalent of #MeToo), was sued for defamation by Éric Brion, the man she accused of sexual harrassment in her initial tweet. She was ordered to pay him €15,000 (roughly $15,000) in 2019, before the decision was later overruled. This was finally confirmed in May 2022 after Brion contested the last judgment.

In 2020, Roman Polanski—who fled the U.S. after pleading guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse" with a 13-year-old girl in 1978—won two Césars (the French equivalent of Oscars) for his film "J’accuse," causing actress Adèle Haenel to leave the audience in outrage and join a feminist demonstration taking place outside. Gérald Darmanin, a politician who was accused of rape by a woman to whom he promised legal assistance while working as a city councilor, has been the French interior minister since 2020; President Emmanuel Macron reassures the public that he has "a man-to-man relationship of trust" with him regarding this matter. Last year, one of the most famous news anchors in France, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, was accused of rape by the author Florence Porcel; he's now suing her for defamation. Since then, more than 30 women have made accusations against him on television and in print, and "PPDA," as he's known by millions, is suing most of them as well.

You can easily understand why women in the French beer industry—who are already far outnumbered—don't feel confident enough to share their stories publicly after seeing how abusers are protected in their own country, whereas their victims are demonized and accused of lying for fame and money. Though France believes it is recognized internationally as "the country of human rights," that's clearly a bad translation on our part. "Les droits de l’homme," as the French expression goes, fittingly translates to "the rights of man."

While these dynamics happen elsewhere, France has a unique way of excusing—and even romanticizing—sexist misbehavior. Just look at how French men (and women) are frequently represented in pop culture: In movies and TV shows, they’re seducers, cheaters, shown to have a more free and open sexuality. These fictional representations may be exaggerated, but they still tell us something about France's complicated relationship with sexuality and consent. "The big cultural difference I see is that harassment is perceived as being flirty, being a seducer who gives compliments," Tassin says.

That's where it lies: The infamous "gray area," where assault is confused with sexuality. A 2019 survey shows that 57% of French people think it's more difficult for men to control their sexual desire, while 42% still believe a rapist is less to blame if their victim had "a provocative attitude." That's part of the reason why these movements are so often criticized and diminished here. Because that's our culture, and if you don't like it, we really couldn't care less. Saying otherwise will see you taunted as a prude—"like an American," they’ll say.

In hindsight, we were probably naive to think that our open letter wouldn't meet the same fate. It failed: That is the sad truth. But even though this piece sounds pessimistic, there have still been some positives in this experience. Our letter proved that French women needed this opportunity to join forces, and that we could all work together in service of something better.

Six months later, the group chat Garlonn Kergourlay created still exists, and we still use it to share our experiences. It's a place I go for support and advice, where I know I won't be judged, where I’ll be cheered up if frustrated or sad, encouraged if I share good news. I’ve now experienced, for the first time in a work environment, sorority in action.

Since the SNBi rebranding, other organizations have also changed their names, like L’Union des Brasseries du Grand-Est. Some new organizations emerged with inclusivity already in mind, like La Confluence des Brasseries in Lyon. Four people volunteered to write a code of conduct for the 2022 Paris Beer Festival, and a new feminist and inclusive beer fest, Brasseuses Semeuses, took place in Saint-Nazaire in early October. "The beginning of 2022 was really more positive than 2021 was. Things are moving, slowly, but it's moving," Kergourlay says.

There are still lots of struggles for inclusivity to be had in the French beer industry, and our institutions need to stop ignoring these issues, because we now know that we have each other's backs. "I think we were actually too nice, and nothing changes with being nice and polite," Kergourlay says. That may be true. By wanting to reach a large audience and gathering as many signatures as we could, we didn't want to scare people away. Perhaps that resulted in the letter not being as forceful as it needed to be.

Some are starting to take a different approach. On July 30, an anonymous Instagram account called Balance ton Brasseur (or "Report your Brewer") shared its first post. Its stated goal is "to report sexist behaviors, physical and verbal abuse, psychological attacks and sexual assaults in the brewing industry." When I contacted the group, one of the people behind the account was very clear about the intention. "The idea is to name abusers," they said.

In our group chat, that idea got plenty of attention. "The day we’ll name names, they’re gonna shit their pants," Cailly wrote.

Maybe we’ll get our answer soon.