"When I opened the door, the client grabbed my breasts": chambermaids, prey to rapists and sexual aggressors

Let's imagine an average hotel in France. Upstairs, a chambermaid walks down the hallway, spare sheets and towels in hand. She stops in front of one of the doors, knocks three times, and waits a moment. Silence. She opens the door. Before her eyes, a man opens his bathrobe. Almost all of these employees have stories like this, sometimes with variations—masturbation scenes, degrading remarks, even assault—to tell.

One figure bears witness to the scale of the phenomenon: during their career in the hotel industry, one in two female employees risks being greeted in their room by a naked guest. This is the finding highlighted in research conducted at the University of Grenoble-Alpes (Isère) by Maud Descamps, a trainer specializing in the prevention of sexist and sexual violence (SSG) in the hotel industry.

While official data remains scarce, the testimonies collected by unions and victim support associations, such as the Association Against Violence Against Women at Work (AVFT), make one thing clear: sexist and sexual violence have come to be internalized by victims as an occupational risk, similar to that of a fall for a construction worker. The notable difference is that the latter normally has a safety harness to avoid the impact.

Fourteen years after the Sofitel affair in New York – where the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for sexually assaulting a chambermaid dramatically demonstrated the incredible impunity that attackers believe they enjoy in these hushed environments – lives continue to be shattered...