PARIS — Cat-callers, wolf-whistlers and harassers of the world, beware.

Marlène Schiappa, France's junior minister for gender equality, is on a mission to hunt you down, by making unwanted public advances to women a punishable offense.

In the midst of a growing backlash against harassers, Schiappa's initiative aims to put France on the global vanguard of anti-harassment legislation, by defining a practice that's rarely encoded in law.

It's an ambitious, if thorny, undertaking that's part of a wider push by President Emmanuel Macron and the 35-year-old former activist for working moms to combat violence against women not just in France, but across Europe.

In an interview with POLITICO, Schiappa, who's also a novelist and mother of two, acknowledged that her proposal — which requires a police officer to witness acts of harassment first-hand — would be difficult to enforce.

But she argued that it would also have a powerful dissuasive effect on men whose boorish come-ons in the public space make many French women feel unsafe. And while the ban's effect is partly symbolic, it would get extra bite from the planned deployment of some 10,000 additional police officers that President Emmanuel Macron would like to see posted to train stations and other preferred hang-outs for street harassers.

"The idea is to establish a fine, as well as a process and an amount so these fines can be imposed on the street harassers" — Marlène Schiappa

"We're conscious that there won't be a police officer present every time there is an act of harassment," Schiappa said. "But we still think it can have very strong value as an example. It's important that French law spells out black on white that it's forbidden to intimidate women in public."

Another hurdle for Schiappa, whose official title is secretary of state for equality between women and men, is defining exactly what constitutes street harassment. To get it right she's tasked five MPs from different parties to work with law enforcement on a definition that's neither too restrictive, nor so slippery it will rule out all unprompted conversation between sexes.

They've yet to reach a consensus.

"Whether it's street harassment or sexist abuse, we're still thinking about how we'll call it," said Schiappa, who was in Brussels as part of a European tour to set new standards against sexual violence, and has had stopovers in Gothenburg, Bucharest and Taormina.

"The idea is to establish a fine, as well as a process and an amount so these fines can be imposed on the street harassers," she said.

No famous scalps in France

Schiappa's initiative is nothing if not a sign of a shift in attitudes toward predatory behavior in France, including at the head of the state. Macron was one of Europe's first leaders to react publicly and forcefully to allegations of harassment and sexual assault against disgraced Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein.

During a rare TV interview last month Macron said it was time for "shame to change sides" between harassers and the harassed, announcing that he'd ordered Weinstein to be stripped of his Légion d'Honneur, a civilian distinction awarded him by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, for "lacking honor."

The Weinstein bombshell reverberated in France, triggering an outpouring of harassment testimonies by women on social media under the hashtags #Metoo and the France-centric #BalanceTonPorc ("squeal on your pig"). Thousands of women shared stories of personal trauma, ranging from everyday boorishness in the metro to aggressive come-ons by managers and bosses, to sexual assault and rape. A chilling theme, many said, was the indifference or inaction of colleagues or superiors alerted to bad behavior in the workplace.

Schiappa, who's also in the news over plans to set a hard lower limit on the age of sexual consent at 13 or 15, with satisfaction that "squeal on your pig" was having effects in the real world.

Thanks to testimonies that named and shamed perpetrators, police reported a 20-percent increase in the number of complaints of harassment or assault since the hashtag started trending, and a 30-percent rise in such complaints to the gendarmerie.

Schiappa also hailed the end of silence over harassment in institutions and especially at the European Parliament, which POLITICO has revealed is fielding dozens of complaints, and where MEP Elisabeth Morin-Chartier is heading efforts to combat harassment.

The Parliament, she said, needed stiffer procedures to root out behavior that typically targeted young assistants from distant EU countries, who have no support network and feel intimidated by powerful MPs.

Where Schiappa was less adamant was on the subject of exposing powerful men in French politics, media and entertainment who were guilty of harassment.

Some problems came down to culture. "This is crucial work in Brussels, where you have several cultures being mixed up and many different approaches to male-female relations, with different ideas of what's acceptable and what isn't," added Schiappa.

Where Schiappa was less adamant was on the subject of exposing powerful men in French politics, media and entertainment who were guilty of harassment. Despite an ongoing purge in the United States, where star news anchor Charlie Rose, Hollywood actor Jeremy Piven, New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush and former New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier have all been forced to respond to harassment allegations in the past few weeks, no such storm has raged in France so far.

The biggest figures to be caught up by public allegations in France are Islamic scholar and Swiss national Tariq Ramadan, who's been accused of rape; and Frédéric Haziza, an anchor on the LCP parliamentary news channel who's been accused of groping young women at the TV station, according to a report by Buzzfeed France.

Ramadan denies all wrongdoing and Haziza has been suspended following an apology posted on social media.

A quick survey of female political journalists suggested that, in the field of politics alone, high-profile perpetrators remain untroubled by allegations.

More broadly, feminists argue that France is still run through by a strain of cultural machismo that allowed inappropriate behavior by ex-IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn to go unreported for years despite being well-known. They also point to the fact that filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was charged with rape on a minor in the United States, is still welcome in France to make his films.

So why do France's powerful predators seem to enjoy greater protection than their U.S. counterparts?

Schiappa said they don't — it's just that the law is working quietly on their cases.

A tip-off hotline for targeted women, plans for tougher penalties against sexual violence and the street harassment fines are all proof of a country responding forcefully to harassment, she said. The lack of famous scalps doesn't necessarily mean that France is shielding its own legion of Weinsteins.

"We're not necessarily waiting for the name of someone who's well-known," she said. "Not all powerful people who harass in France are well-known... If there was someone in the movie industry with 30 women accusing them, I think there would be a massive outcry, but I don't know of any such cases."

Asked if, in addition to courts, companies needed to start cracking down on abusive behavior, she added: "It's true that we generally need to change from a society where people band together between the accused harassers to one where we rally behind the victims."

'Inclusive writing'

By underwriting tough measures against harassment, Schiappa argued that Macron was putting France at the forefront of what can be done to protect women. But she was cautious on the question of paternity leave, which is nominally limited to 11 days in France.

Macron hasn't included an extension of paternity leave in his roadmap for her ministry, she said. Besides, when his presidential campaign questioned voters across France about the subject, it was mostly women who wanted longer paternity leave, while men remained indifferent.

"The same laws apply differently in different countries," said Schiappa. "It may not be advisable to extend paternity leave if no-one is taking those days... But it's a question worth discussing."

As a self-avowed feminist and former activist, Schiappa stands out from other Macron ministers for her willingness to veer off-script at times and to wade into thorny cultural debates. In a government known for its obsession with controlling the message, that tendency has been both a major boost for her public profile and a liability that earned her a reputation of being gaffe-prone.

In one example, Schiappa forcefully denied that her office was due for a 25-percent budget cut, just days before a cut for that precise amount was unveiled. She's also come under scrutiny for persistent allegations, which she denied, that she was behind several erotic works of fiction written under a pseudonym.

Lately, Schiappa's been in the hot seat in a debate over "écriture inclusive," or "inclusive writing," the practice of writing French in a way that's gender-neutral, including by spelling out feminine variations of words via a grammatical system of suspended points.

The debate over inclusive writing has awakened France's culture warriors, who've had little to chew on since the election of a president allergic to controversy. L'Académie Française, the guardian of linguistic orthodoxy, denounced inclusive writing as a "mortal threat" to the French language, while right-wing MPs went so far as to introduce a bill banning the practice together.

The debate grew to such a strident pitch that Prime Minister Édouard Philippe was forced to step in last week, announcing a ban on all inclusive writing in official communications.

The real problem, Schiappa suggested, lay elsewhere — in worsening dynamics between boys and girls at school, notably in tough neighborhoods.

Speaking to POLITICO a few days before Philippe's announcement, Schiappa — who's previously been the target of feminist outrage — hedged her bets. It's a good idea to always mention feminized titles in speeches and public addresses, but she drew the line at teaching the suspended-point system in school.

"As a feminist, I think semantics are important, that words create things ... My personal view is that this debate should not be the one debate we're having about equality between men and women."

She added: "Honestly, I'm not in favor of teaching the suspended points in school, and it doesn't seem right to me that we're going to solve the problem of equality with points."

The real problem, Schiappa suggested, lay elsewhere — in worsening dynamics between boys and girls at school, notably in tough neighborhoods.

"I hear about school directors who say that little boys don't want to hold the hands of little girls because they are 'dirty' and that it's 'impure' to hold their hands. There are young women who don't go to the swimming pool, and they're not 16 or 17, but eight and nine years old, because their families tell them not to show their bodies in public."

"There, we've really got a delicate subject of how education communicates Republican values — and it's everywhere."