The walk from the Gare du Nord across the Seine to France’s centre of power, a string of buildings off the Quai d’Orsay, takes a pleasant, circuitous hour: the route is a tourist’s dream. But for Marlène Schiappa, France’s freshly appointed gender equality minister, the streets of Paris are the frontline in a war between the sexes. Where I see boutiques and fruit and vegetable stalls, cafes and splendid architecture, Schiappa’s eye is drawn instead to the idling men ogling young women; to the handsome displays in every pharmacy window advertising weight-loss solutions – “Minceur Thé Vert” (Slimming Green Tea), “Ventre Plat” (Flat Stomach – and illustrated by pictures of delighted young women using a tape measure as a skipping rope. “France is paradoxical,” Schiappa tells me. “We are the country of Simone de Beauvoir, of feminist theory and philosophy. But we are also a Latin country with entrenched stereotypes.”

She greets me warmly in what must have once been a grand dining room; the parliamentary district in the 7th arrondissement has not changed much since its vast mansions were built for nobility in the 18th century. It is the day before Theresa May will meet Emmanuel Macron, France’s youngest ever president, who assumed office on 14 May. At 39, with no campaigning experience, Macron has surrounded himself with young cabinet members who are new to politics, as a way of making a clean break with his socialist predecessor Francois Hollande. This week he made businesswoman Florence Parly minister for the armed forces (defence for four of the EU’s five largest economies is now overseen by women); he has appointed TV presenter Nicolas Hulot as environmental and social transition minister (the equivalent of Theresa May giving David Attenborough a cabinet post).

But Macron’s most contentious appointment is Schiappa, at 34 the youngest member of his cabinet, whom he has put in charge of equality between men and women, with a brief to tackle the gender pay gap and improve women’s rights in the workplace. A former advertising executive-turned-author, she’s best known as a campaigner and blogger, and has outraged France’s right wing with her unapologetic feminism.

She shows me into her airy, high-ceilinged office where we sit on new modern chairs, her replacement for the stuffy furniture that used to be here. This is the room where Schiappa has begun hauling in public figures to call them out on sexist behaviour (and then tweet about whether the meeting ended satisfactorily). She wears gold hoop earrings, her long, thick hair pulled back in a loose knot, and is friendly and straightforward in a way that’s still rare in top-level politics.

Schiappa says that Macron did particularly well with female voters in the presidential elections. Why does she think that is? “He was the first to say, ‘I’m a feminist.’ Second, because he believes in parity in parliament.” Exactly half his cabinet is female. Plus, she says, unlike other politicians, “he went out and listened to people. Really listened.”

I think we realise that we need real people, not concepts or abstractions. This is real life – we tell it like it is

Schiappa’s first goal is to tackle sexual harassment on the street. “It’s a huge phenomenon in France. It’s that moment when a man is walking behind a woman, talking to her, and the woman can do nothing, because she’s alone. She doesn’t scream for help, because she thinks, ‘It’s not that bad, I’ll walk, I’ll escape.’ Men feel it’s acceptable: they’re being ‘the French lover’.” Women are molested on public transport so frequently, Schiappa says, that many will dress in ways to avoid it before they use the Métro or bus. It’s enough of a problem that the previous government launched an anti-harassment campaign called Stop: That’s Enough to encourage people to report any incidents. “In France, if a woman is sexually assaulted, her first thought is, ‘Now I’m dirty and no one will ever want to marry me’ – the social responsibility of the victim.”

Her solution is on-the-spot fines. Macron has pledged to expand the police force by 10,000 over the next five years: why not give them powers to police sexism in the same way they do smokers who drop their cigarettes? “Twenty euros would be a bit humiliating, €5,000 would be more of a deterrent. At the moment, many men are saying, ‘It’s not a big deal, we’re only having fun.’ And we say, ‘No.’” She says she’ll be nailing down a precise strategy with the justice secretary soon.

Schiappa intends to take a similarly radical approach to closing the pay gap. In France, women earn between 12% and 27% less than men, depending on sector. Her proposal is that major companies will be invited to consult privately with the government on solutions. Those who refuse will be named and shamed.

She is also keen to discuss what she describes as France’s “culture of rape”. “Minimising rape or finding excuses,” she clarifies, before offering an example. “The former vice president of the National Assembly, Denis Baupin, has been accused by eight women of sexual assault and he wasn’t fired.” Baupin denies the allegations, some of which date back 15 years, and has quit his role after pressure from politicians and the press. No charges were brought because the statute of limitations had expired (in France, it is just three years for sexual harassment cases).

Marlène Schiappa and Emmanuel Macron on public transport in Le Mans, October 2016. Photograph: Chamussy/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock

The French media does not help, Schiappa says: “You never say the word ‘rapist’ in an article in France. You say, ‘A woman has been raped’ or ‘A woman who claims to have been raped.’ They never say, ‘A man raped a woman.’ It’s to hide the rapist. It’s victim-blaming.”

Another part of Schiappa’s brief is to tackle homophobia – a huge task, as illustrated by a meeting she had last week at the town hall in Le Mans. “I was talking about a proposal around LGBT rights, and one man, an elected official from the far right, said, ‘You forgot the Z.’ I asked him what he meant. ‘LGBTZ,’ he said. ‘Z stands for zoophile.’” The official ended up making a donation to a LGBT association. “As minister for equality, it’s business as usual for me. They’re everywhere. There’s no need to insult them in return. We have to fight them and defend our ideas, but more loudly.”

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Schiappa first entered politics in 2014, when she stood as a candidate in the municipal elections in Le Mans, her home suburb. She was elected and became deputy mayor, in charge of gender equality and a technology project. The following year, she met Macron, then minister of the economy under Hollande, at a French technology event. She says she met him on only 13 more occasions before the government job was hers. In the intervening period, she worked in what was then called the Ministry of Family, Children and Women’s Rights, where she drew up a new measure to introduce greater transparency in nursery applications (the French system is riddled with corruption; waiting lists are long and there are widespread accusations of bribery and favouritism). When Macron launched his presidential campaign last August, Schiappa was quick to support him.

Schiappa is Corsican, and grew up in a multiracial council estate north of Paris. She has said she became a feminist at 13 when she realised how, unlike her father (a leftwing historian), she was unable to walk the streets unharassed; she and other women in the neighbourhood would plan self-defence strategies. Her father showed her how to make a knuckle-duster out of her house keys.

She now has two daughters aged 10 and five; her husband (whom she keeps out of the public eye) co-wrote some of her books. When she had her first daughter, she was working in advertising. “The women around me, they had one, two, three children; they were in meetings really late in the day. I was asking, ‘How do you do this? How do you look after your children when you are working that hard?’ I think working mothers has been a big subject in the United Kingdom for a long time, but in France it was not. There was no ministry of women’s rights at the time, and it was not in the public debates. I began the blog [Maman Travaille] and then set up a support network of working mothers, to talk and to put together proposals for politics and companies.”

When you are a woman from the suburbs, and you are young, and you are to the left of politics, you’re unacceptable

The blog was a hit, in part because the head of Yahoo in France had children, loved it and promoted it online. Word spread; Schiappa was interviewed in French Elle, in Madame Figaro. She left advertising to spend more time with her daughter, then began writing novels. She joined another ad agency, “but got pregnant again, so I left”. She wrote more, expanding her repertoire to non-fiction books on motherhood and feminism; titles include Letters To My Uterus and Who Are The Rapists? A novel she published in 2014, No More Than Four Hours’ Sleep A Night, is being turned into a film.

Schiappa debated Marine Le Pen in 2012, at a symposium arranged by French Elle. “She was talking about what the extreme right called ‘comfort abortion’ – she invented the expression – saying there were women having abortions 10 or 12 times a year and that the state – poor white people – was paying for it.” The French far right is known for its racism and xenophobia, but less is said about its misogyny. “Marine Le Pen wanted to stop state-funding for abortions,” Schiappa says. “Two members of parliament wrote a proposal to ban women from working. When you are a woman who is from the suburbs, and you are young, and you are to the left of politics, you’re unacceptable. But the radical right has insulted every single woman before me.”

How does she think a woman rose to the top of such a misogynistic party? Two reasons, Schiappa says: “Because she adopts a masculine style. She speaks loudly – she’s yelling, she’s screaming; she wants to humiliate the people she is talking to.” And because “it’s a family business. If you are a woman and your name is not Le Pen, you cannot have a career in the Front National. It’s family before women’s rights.”

Schiappa in her office. Photograph: Emmanuel Fradin/The Guardian

Of all Macron’s new cabinet members, Schiappa has drawn the nastiest criticism. The right wing is especially irritated by her views on France’s sexually predatory and chauvinistic male culture. Critics dislike her plans to introduce state maternity cover for self-employed women, and to make artificial insemination available for lesbian, older and single women (it’s currently available only for heterosexual couples). They are squeamish about other campaigns: earlier this year, she was part of a group that said French mothers are being treated as criminals for choosing to bottlefeed rather than breastfeed. Some have seized on one of her more light-hearted books about motherhood, in which she advised women how to prolong maternity leave (humorously, she says): “Make yourself ugly, come across as traumatised, exaggerate everything”; she was encouraging women to defraud the state, her critics argued. She has not escaped censure from the left, either – accused of being a “masculiniste” (anti-feminist) for a book she wrote more than a decade ago in praise of the sexual power of overweight women.

In the three articles Le Figaro publish about Schiappa in the week I meet her, they claim, variously, that she is the woman to “save” French politics; that she has an “adolescent’s addiction to social media;” and that she is a “télé-feministe” for posting an online video interviewing women in Paris about their experiences of sexual harassment. But “the Fachosphère [the fascist internet] and its appendages can continue their neverending flow of hate,” Schiappa tweeted last week. “It will never stop me from working!”

She is frustrated that some of the cultural myths about French women persist: that they don’t get fat; that French babies sleep through the night; that French toddlers don’t throw food. “All of that is not true,” Schiappa says, rankled. “But we hear it everywhere. Of course French women are all different weights, and weight is a factor of discrimination.” What the bestsellers on French women and their supposed perfection totally miss, she says, is France’s sexist way of life. She says that married women are still expected to abide by their “devoir conjugal”, or conjugal duty to have sex. Sexism travels top down: “Cécile Duflot [a Green politician] was catcalled in the National Assembly because she was wearing a dress with flowers on it. The attitude, even at the very top is, ‘C’est la vie.’”

Schiappa (back row, second from left) with members of Macron’s new government. Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/AFP/Getty Images

Schiappa supports the ban on religious clothing in schools, but has also argued that mothers should be permitted to enter school grounds in a veil, otherwise they would be ostracised from their children’s education (they are now allowed to by law). But she warns against too much religious tolerance. “Feminism can be obstructed by the banner of anti-racism. For example, how people denied what happened in Cologne [when there were large-scale sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve 2015]. Feminism can’t have ideological barriers.” Will her brief include Muslim communities? “You know, in France, we don’t think about ‘communities’. We are a revolutionary French République. There is just one community. This is a French law, the separation between church and state.” It’s a statement that I doubt is widely shared across France.

When she was a freelancer, scarce childcare meant Schiappa would often take her children to meetings. As deputy mayor, she made a point of leaving work punctually at 4pm to do the school run. “At first, I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, I’m rude.’ Then women came to say, ‘Thank you for doing that, because now we are doing the same thing.’ So I think, if you have the power to make these things visible, you must, because other people will benefit. When you’re on a salary, it’s hard to tell your boss or colleagues, ‘Hey, I’m bringing my child to the meeting.’ But I used my power because I get to decide.”

Schiappa is concerned with domestic equality, too, she says. “We started with public life, and now we have to change professional and private life. People don’t want the state to enter the home and tell men to wash the dishes.” But gender equality is good for men, she argues. “Many fathers don’t take their 11 days’ paternity leave, because they are afraid of losing their jobs.”

Macron has acted quickly on his pledge to create equality in parliament: he fielded equal numbers of male and female candidates in this month’s election, and appointed a gender-balanced cabinet, with 11 of 22 posts taken by women. Last weekend’s elections returned the highest ever number of female politicians (38.5% of the seats). “We have a female minister of sport who is a former champion” [fencer Laura Flessel holds the record for the most medals won by a French female Olympian]. And I’m glad we have a woman as defence minister, because I can tell my daughter, ‘You can fight even if you are a woman – you can make war, you can make peace, too.’ Now we have four women for every 10 people in parliament. Before Macron, it was two in 10. More women means it’s going to be more unacceptable to catcall a woman if she wears a flowery dress to work.”

Half of Macron’s new politicians are complete unknowns, reflecting a wider shift in politics in the west. This is a rejection of the establishment that Schiappa is proud to be part of. “Yes, more people from civil society are coming into politics,” she says. “I think we realise that we need real people, not concepts or abstractions. This is real life – we tell it like it is.” What does she say to those who say she lacks the political experience to hold a government post? “Well,” she laughs, “I have life experience and I think it’s quite enough. And we know now that people with political experience don’t have much success. The country is not in a good state. So let us try.”