Le Collectif des créatrices de bande dessinée contre le sexisme (Female Comics Creators Against Sexism), also referred to as BD Égalité, is an organization of women creators from the Franco-Belgian comics field dedicated to bringing to light discrimination against women creators and challenging sexist, stereotyped narratives in and about comics themselves.
History[]
At the 2014 Angoulême Festival, Lisa Mandel hosted a panel on "men and comics" (Les hommes et le BD) to parody the heavily gendered treatment of women creators and their works based on input she received from at least 30 female creators.
Then in the spring of 2015, Julie Maroh and Jeanne Puchol were invited by the Belgian Comic Strip Center to participate in an exhibition entitled "Les BDs des filles" ("Girls' Comics"), centered on "comics aimed at girls (from 7 to 77 years old)". Maroh's invitation listed "romantic comics for lonely ladies" and "comics for shopaholics" among the sorts of comics they wanted to exhibit. Maroh's attempts to explain why the project was misogynistic and oppressive were brushed off because girls' comics are "a publishing niche" and "a marketing scheme", while Puchol's invitation itself explicitly referred to girls' comics as "an old obsession of publishers" and an "often futile" endeavor.
Maroh emailed about 70 female creators (many of whom had been among those surveyed by Mandel in 2013) to organize a response. The result was the Collectif, whose charter was signed by 200 creators, and an alliance with the Spanish collective Autoras de Cómic.
Members[]
Members are primarily from France and Belgium, including immigrants of various origins, as well as a number of Italians, Americans, and Canadians who have at some point worked in a Franco-Belgian context.
External Links[]
- "Charter (english)", Collectif des créatrices de bande dessinée contre le sexisme. Accessed 3 Oct 2017.