Many demonstrators carried signs with the expression "shame must change sides", an expression said by the plaintiff in the highly publicized rape trial Gisele Pélicot.
Pélicot has become a feminist icon since she insisted on a public trial.
Exactly how many people participated in Saturday's demonstrations is difficult to say. The police estimate that around 35,000 people protested across the country, while the organizers report higher figures.
Want to see a law on consent
Thousands of people marched in the capital, mostly women but also some children and men.
A law on consent must be put in place very quickly. Just because someone doesn't say anything doesn't mean they consent, said Marie-Claire Abiker, 78, a retired nurse who marched in Paris.
France's legal definition of rape is "any form of sexual penetration ... through violence, coercion, threats or assault", but does not contain any words about consent – a crucial demand from women's rights groups.
Demanding action
The demonstrations, organized by over 400 different campaign groups, took place two days before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. On Monday, the final arguments in the rape trial against Pélicot and around 50 other men who assaulted Gisele Pélicot are expected.
According to the newspaper La Tribune Dimanche, Prime Minister Michel Barnier will launch measures against men's violence against women, including increased education for police and more support for victims of domestic violence when they leave their homes.
The organizations that arranged Saturday's protests are calling for more far-reaching measures, including a special budget of 2.6 billion euros and a more robust legal framework.
For several years, Gisèle Pélicot had strange memory lapses and other health problems and believed she had Alzheimer's.
In 2020, she found out from the police that her husband Dominique Pélicot, also the father of her three children, had secretly given her large doses of sedatives, raped her, and invited dozens of strangers to their shared home to participate. The crimes had been going on for nearly a decade and were carefully documented and cataloged by her husband.
The husband was caught more or less by chance in 2020, after he had filmed under women's skirts in a local supermarket. The documentation of the assaults led the police to 50 suspected perpetrators, one of whom is still at large.
Dominique Pélicot had also photographed his daughter and his sons' wives without their knowledge and published nude pictures of them on social media along with pornographic photomontages.
