#1 | Élise Fabing, the lawyer hired after employees and women
Welcome to POING FORT, the podcast that will give you the weapons of self-confidence. In this first season, 10 guests remove the mask to speak to us frankly about the failures and doubts they had to overcome to achieve their ambitions.
In this very first episode, I had the privilege of meeting Élise Fabing, a lawyer specializing in employee defense and labor law.
Very early on, Elise was predestined for a career as a lawyer. While she was on an internship in a firm, she was the victim of an injustice which would be the starting point of her vocation: to free the voice around workplace violence and sexist discrimination.
Self-confidence, failures, feminism, burn-out, #balance: so many topics for an engaged and fiery conversation that I invite you to discover!
Margaux: can you introduce yourself?
I am a lawyer, specialist in employee defense and labor law.
So I only defend employees, never companies, and have done so for quite a long time. I've been the #Balance of Motion #MeToo Accounts Lawyer at work. I specialize in the defense of women, so everything related to sexist discrimination, particularly maternity discrimination, equal pay.
I tried to publicize these subjects of violence at work, because it still seems too ordinary for many people, whereas these situations are real tsunamis for the people who experience them.
I am quite proud to have made my contribution to this liberation of speech around these subjects, which were still very taboo when I started, thirteen years ago. I am co-founder of the Alkemist lawyers firm with Alice, and we have a great team.
And I wrote a first book, which is The Manual Against Harassment at Work. I really have this obsession with access to the law.
Margaux : You said at the very beginning that the team was 100% female. Why did you make this particular choice?
Good because we already have a profession that is becoming more feminine. And then, I really wanted to launch and train lawyers, to give them confidence. Because for us, women, even if the profession is becoming more feminized, there are still mostly men who are associate lawyers. I do a lot of departure negotiations, as a manager. I am very often the only woman at the negotiating table and I wanted to train women. And then, we are still a very feminist firm.
Margaux : How did the Libra accounts start?
Here we go, still a bit of chance. I saw Anne Wester's account on my feed, Balance your agency! And, I said to myself: it's super interesting, because it 's true that social justice is dysfunctional, there are a lot of things that are wrong and I saw that as a bit of a cry of revolt. of the weakest employees. And like in my Insta, there was the fact that I was a lawyer, she contacted me quite quickly because she was already threatened, but it was at the beginning of her account. We met and it was a great meeting. I admired his courage. Afterwards , we thought about how to provide access to rights on your account for all employees.
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Margaux : And this second book, which is in preparation, how did you choose its theme?
I wanted to write a book about women and all the pitfalls they can encounter during their careers. It’s a book about the price of women’s silence in their careers. On how the world of work silences women, how companies, when women are victims of discrimination or harassment, will buy their silence. And I wanted to tell their stories, because often they have confidentiality clauses that they can't talk about. So, I wanted to give them a voice and explain to all women what can be experienced throughout one's career.
And it's a quite, quite intimate book, and it wasn't easy for me, since I recount my encounters. Because my job is also stories of encounters. I meet incredible people all the time. And they inspire me, all these women I help, they are my heroines. They give me strength, they are very powerful.
And then, I often say that there are only happy endings here, because I also see them being reconstructed. I see them becoming different, reinventing their relationship with work, changing their lives. And it's completely fascinating.
Watch the episode:
