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Debating and implementinggender parity in FrenchpoliticsSandrine Dauphin & Jocelyne PraudPublished online: 18 Aug 2010.

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ISSN 0963-9489 print/ISSN 1469-9869 online/02/010005-07 q 2002 ASM&CFDOI: 10.1080/0963948012010753 2

Modern & Contemporary FranceVol. 10, No. 1, 2002, pp. 5–11

On 28 June 1999, the two houses of the French Parliament met in Versailles andadopted a constitutional bill on gender parity in politics modifying articles 3 and 4 ofthe Constitution. Henceforth, article 3 specifies that ‘the law favours women andmen’s equal access to elected office’, and article 4 requires that political partiesimplement this new provision. After a debate among French intellectuals on therelevance and necessity of using the principle of parity to enhance women’s repre-sentation in elected assemblies and the development of a political consensus on thisissue, France became the first country in the world to pass such a bill. This is all themore surprising since the concept of parity initially appeared at the European level.More specifically, the term ‘parity democracy’ was coined at a seminar of theCouncil of Europe in 1989.1 French women then seized on the concept at theCommission’s first European summit ‘Femmes au pouvoir’ that took place in Athensin November 1992.

Why did parity resonate more with French women than with other Europeanwomen? Clearly, in France, more than anywhere else, parity heightened publicawareness of the small number of women involved in politics. In the 1990s, variousstatistics and studies identified France as being near the bottom of the Europeanleague, just above Greece, with regard to women’s representation in electedassemblies. In 1992, 5.6 per cent of elected representatives were women, a figure thatdoubled to reach 10.9 per cent in June 1997. The symbolic case of Edith Cresson,France’s first woman Prime Minister (from May 1991 until April 1992), who washarshly rejected by both the Right and the Left, should also be mentioned. Aroundthe same time, just as several women politicians recounted the difficulties they

Introduction

Debating and implementing gender parity inFrench politics

SANDRINE DAUPHINUniversité Paris VII-Jussieu

JOCELYNE PRAUDUniversity of Regina, Canada

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6 S. DAUPHIN & J. PRAUD

encountered because of the ir sex , a number of books denounc ing F renchdemocracy’s exclusion of women were published.2

To understand why women have had tremendous difficulties gaining access to theFrench political arena, it is important to look at France’s history. To begin with, theFrench Revolution played a key role in the exclusion of women from politics bysanctioning the sexual division of labour as well as the separation of private andpublic spheres and by codifying sexual inequality. It is commonly assumed thatuniversal suffrage was first acquired in 1848 even though women were excludedfrom it on the grounds that the 1804 Code civil napoléonien identified them asminors. In the end, France was late in enfranchising women. Women were eventuallygranted the franchise in 1944 by a decree (rather than a vote of the Parliament) issuedby General de Gaulle in recognition of their involvement in the Resistance.Suffragists mistakenly thought that the franchise would open the doors of electedassemblies to women. Insidiously, however, the use of the exceptional measure ofthe decree to enfranchise women undermined their legitimacy to enter the FrenchParliament in large numbers. Fifty years later, the proportion of women in electedassemblies having not progressed at all, the concept of political parity was used todenounce the under-representation of women in assemblies and presented as a tool toremedy it.3 For the historian Geneviève Fraisse, parity, or ‘perfect equality’ as it ismost often defined, is ‘l’habit de l’égalité’, since it guarantees women and men’sequal access to decision-making positions. Thus, ensuring gender parity in politicssignals that women have the same rights and legitimacy as men to represent societyas a whole.

At the same time, ensuring gender parity in politics also signals that republicanuniversalism has failed to bring about equality between men and women. Notsurprisingly then, the idea of parity led to a heated debate among French intel-lectuals. While nobody dared to contest the existence of a democratic deficit due towomen’s virtual absence from politics, the use of coercive means to boost women’srepresentation aroused some fierce controversies.

How can more women be elected to assemblies? This political and pragmaticquestion leads one to reflect on the different voting systems, the functioning ofpolitical parties, the French tradition of holding several mandates concurrently(cumul des mandats) and the status of elected officials (statut de l’élu). However,during the debate of 1998–1999, the question concerning the means to enhancewomen’s representation became a question of principle: how could women’srepresentation be increased without infringing on the republican principles thatguarantee equality among all citizens? Paritarists and anti-paritarists advancedseveral arguments that are summarised in Table 1.

From the emergence of the demand for parity until the adoption of the con-stitutional bill, three phases may be distinguished. The first phase concerns themobilisation of women and, in particular, women politicians. In 1992, FrançoiseGaspard, Claude Servan-Schreiber and Anne Le Gall published a very importantbook, Au pouvoir citoyennes! Liberté, égalité, parité.4 That same year, and shortlyafter the conference of Athens, newly-established parity associations—composedmainly of women active in political parties—started to lobby the authorities. More

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INTRODUCTION 7

than 100 other women’s and feminist associations included parity, or the principlethat the assemblies of a democracy should be composed of an equal number ofwomen and men, in their statutes. To justify their support of parity, these associationspointed to the fact that while 53 per cent of the electorate was female, only 5 per centof elected representatives were women. As soon as the question about the means touse to achieve parity was raised, divisions began to appear among pro-parity associa-tions, and anti-paritarists began to mobilise. On 10 November 1993, the newspaperLe Monde published the ‘Manifeste des 577 pour une démocratie paritaire’5 whichdemanded that an organic law providing that ‘elected assemblies at the local andnational levels be composed of an equal number of women and men’ be adopted.Certain pro-parity associations, however, insisted on the need to first modify theConstitution. For them, constitutional reform was crucial in light of the 1982 decisionof the Constitutional Council to strike down a law requiring that lists for municipalelections comprise a maximum of 75 per cent of candidates from the same sex. Atthe time, the Constitutional Council based its decision on the republican idea thatneither voters, nor candidates should be divided in categories.6 Although the demandfor parity did not give rise to a large social movement, it nevertheless revealed asituation that was democratically unjustifiable, at a time when the crisis of legitimacyfaced by political parties was particularly acute.

Table 1.

Arguments against parity Arguments for parity

It undermines republican universalism Universalism is not neutral since it hasbecause citizens cannot be defined by their exclusively benefited men.social, religious or sexual characteristics.

It leaves the door open to communitarianism Women are not a category, they are halfand thus to the demands of other minorities. of the population and thus transcend all

categories.

It is a humiliating quota for women. Parity is about perfect equality. Bycontrast, quotas are temporary measures.

Women will be elected as women and not Because of their cultural differences,because of their skills. women will change politics. It is

important to use women’s existing skills,which have not been valued thus far.

Parity is an obstacle to the emancipation Women are not a minority. Women areof other excluded groups. not solely responsible for the

emancipation of other excluded groups.

Women’s interests will not be represented. Women’s interests will be even lessrepresented in a predominantly maleassembly. Parity can draw attention onissues that have been neglected up until now.

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8 S. DAUPHIN & J. PRAUD

The second phase in the political history of gender parity relates to the reaction ofthose most affected by it, namely, political parties. Les Verts were the first party toinsert parity into their statutes in 1988. Through the 1990s, left- and right-wingparties presented several bills relating to parity.7 Right away, it became apparent thatthe demand for parity did not fit the traditional left/right cleavage. In the 1994European elections, Socialist leader Michel Rocard headed the first parity list. Oneyear later, in the presidential elections of 1995, all the candidates, except far-rightcandidates Jean-Marie le Pen and Philippe de Villiers, stated that they werefavourable to parity while endorsing different means to achieve it. Why did paritybecome an issue in French elections? Clearly, as elections drew nearer, parity was‘hijacked’ by politicians who were well aware that 53 per cent of the electorate wasfemale. Furthermore, parity not only highlighted the need to reassess the functioningof democratic institutions, which had become more removed from voters, but it alsoresponded to the general crisis of political representation. This caused politicalparties to outdo each other regarding women. In 1995, Alain Juppé’s first govern-ment was comprised of 12 women, making it France’s most feminised government.However, the dismissal in November 1995 of those whom the media called the‘Jupettes’ indicated that parties were still using token women. Moreover, one monthearlier, in keeping with the promise of presidential candidate Jacques Chirac, theObservatoire de la parité, responsible for making proposals to the government onhow to improve the situation of women in the public and private spheres, had beenestablished. Thus, to denounce the unwillingness of political elites and parties topromote women to positions of power, 10 high-profile women from the Left and theRight published a manifesto in support of political parity in the magazine L’Express.8

Lastly, the third phase concerns the adoption of two bills on gender parity inpolitics. In January 1997, the first report of the Observatoire de la parité, entitled LaParité entre les femmes et les hommes dans la vie politique and written by GisèleHalimi,9 was submitted to the Prime Minister. It concluded that political parity had tobe inserted into the Constitution and recommended that a referendum be held on thisamendment.10 Despite a debate in the National Assembly, the report did not havemuch of an impact—in part because the government was not favourable to it.Eventually, the process leading up to constitutional reform got under way at the timeof the 1997 legislative elections. The Parti socialiste ensured that 30 per cent of itscandidates were women, which helped to double the number of women elected to theNational Assembly. In June 1998, one year after its electoral victory, the newgovernment, led by Socialist Lionel Jospin, in agreement with the President of theRepublic, announced its intention to modify article 3 of the Constitution; this wasaccomplished in July 1999 after a consensus was reached between the NationalAssembly (dominated by the Left) and the Senate (dominated by the Right). Whatcould have been a symbolic modification was strengthened by the subsequentmodification of the voting system requiring that political parties present a parityof women and men candidates in municipal, regional, legislative and Europeanelections as well as in some senatorial elections.

These three phases show how the demand for parity evolved from first a parity ofelected officials, as advocated by the various parity and women’s associations in the

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INTRODUCTION 9

early 1990s, to a parity of candidates, as now required by law. While parity did notlead to a radical revamping of the French political system, it nevertheless triggered anumber of reforms in the area of women’s rights including, for example: measuresfacilitating women’s access to decision-making positions in the public service; theLaw of 9 May 2001 on professional equality that reinforces the provisions of theRoudy Law of 1983; the Law of 3 July 2001 lengthening the legal period to have anabortion from 10 to 12 weeks; and several proposals on how to balance professionallife and family life via a more equal allocation of tasks between women and menwithin the private sphere. Nowadays, parity is such a common term that one speaksof ‘economic parity’ and ‘domestic parity’. Given today’s less heated context, it thusappears timely to re-examine the political and social implications of parity.

The articles presented in this issue of Modern & Contemporary France provideoriginal analyses of the intellectual and political debate on gender parity in Frenchpolitics as well as the implementation of the new legal provisions regarding parity.The first two articles highlight that the parity debate did not really tackle the questionof sexual difference. According to Françoise Picq, what appears to be a commonsense victory, namely, the establishment of a universalism finally made real by theincrease in the number of women in elected assemblies, is, in fact, ambiguous,especially when considered in relation to the feminism of the 1970s. In her view,parity is at odds with second-wave feminism in two ways. First, paritarists’ referenceto the particular complementary contribution that women make to politics and theirinsistence on this difference contradict second-wave feminists’ belief in the equalityof all human beings. Second, in the 1970s, feminism gave rise to a social movementthat wanted to change (and not share) political power. Today, the strategy is differentsince many of the high-profi le paritarists are women politicians who already holdpolitical power.

For Marie-Blanche Tahon, the intellectual debate on parity and, more specifically,the arguments of anti-paritarists failed to adequately address the issue of sexualdifference in politics. By systematically emphasising the differentialism of pro-parityarguments and reducing them to biology, anti-paritarists may have ended up popular-ising the notion of differentialism and reinforcing masculine dominance. Tahon alsopoints out that in the parity debate as well as in the debate about the PACS (Pactecivil de solidarité), critics identified these reforms as affirmative action measuresdesigned to fight discrimination. In her view, such an interpretation is problematic inthe case of parity as it reinforces the notion that women are just another minority.Tahon then concludes that the arguments of anti-paritarists appear to have de-politicised the question of women’s integration into the political sphere and caused a‘socialisation of politics’.

The parliamentary debate, as presented by Manon Tremblay, was much less heatedin part because it primarily aimed at reaching a consensus. In her analysis ofdeputies’ and senators’ debates on the constitutional bill, the author highlights theopportunism of men and women politicians who came to view parity as a means tomodernise the political arena. Finally, under the pressure of senators, political partiesidentified parity as a tool rather than a principle to favour equality, hence themodification of article 4 of the Constitution relating to political parties. In the end,

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parliamentarians focussed on the means to increase the number of women in nationalrepresentation and failed to really discuss the very reasons for demanding parity.Tremblay laments the lack of debate on representative democracy and the roleof women’s political representation, a debate that parity should and could haveengendered.

This political opportunism is analysed by Sandrine Dauphin through the case ofthe municipal elections of March 2001, the first elections when the law on ‘womenand men’s equal access to elected office’ was implemented. The numerical resultswere significant, with 47.5 per cent of women town councillors in municipalitieswith more than 3500 residents, as against 25 per cent before. Without the parity law,it is doubtful that the results would have been so positive. None the less, thesefigures hide another reality, the fact that few women hold real positions of powersuch as those of mayors, deputy mayors, inter-town councillors (conseillers inter-communaux), and general councillors (conseillers généraux), which often lead to aparliamentary career. In Dauphin’s view, if a political consensus was reached onparity, it was mainly because it did not fundamentally question the selection processof political elites.

The article by Audrey Ducoulombier confirms that parity does not really call theFrench political system into question. In her piece, Ducoulombier criticises the paritydebate for failing to address the deficiencies of French feminism whose theories havetraditionally ignored ethnic origins. For her, it is essential to examine how Frenchrepublican universalism has excluded not only women, but also visible minorities.She points out that the parity debate could have led to a discussion on the repre-sentation of France’s West Indian citizens. However, the fear of multiculturalismprevented the debate from referring to other social categories, thus laying thefoundation for the inclusion of all social categories in the French political system.

These different and original analyses of parity indicate that the very functioning ofFrench democracy was not questioned. At the dawn of this new century, it isessential that parity does not simply become a solution to the legitimacy crisis ofpolitical women and men, especially since it could engender a real reflection on amore representative democracy.

Notes and references

1. See SLEDZIEWSKI, E., ‘Rapports sur les idéaux démocratiques et les droits des femmes’, Séminairesur la démocratie paritaire (Conseil de l’Europe, 1989).

2. FRAISSE, G., Muse de la raison: la démocratie exclusive et la différence des sexes (Alinéa, 1989);FRAISSE, G., La Raison des femmes (Plon, 1992); SCOTT, J.W., Only Paradoxes to Offer: FrenchFeminists and the Rights of Man (Harvard University Press, 1996).

3. In the 1940s, the National Assembly included about 5 to 6 per cent of women. After the 1993 legisla-tive elections, the proportion of women deputies was 6 per cent.

4. GASPARD, F., SERVAN-SCHREIBER, C. and LE GALL, A., Au pouvoir citoyennes! Liberté,égalité, parité (Seuil, 1992).

5. See Le Monde (10 novembre 1993). It was signed by 577 persons (289 women and 288 men), which isexactly the same as the number of seats in the National Assembly.

6. See ‘Décision du Conseil constitutionnel’ 82–146 DC (18 novembre 1982). 7. These included: the 1994 bill of the Parti communiste designed to ‘ensure a balanced participation of

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INTRODUCTION 11

women and men in public life’; the 1994 bill of the left-wing Mouvement des citoyens which aimed at‘ensuring that men and women’s equal access to elected office be effectively respected via parity’; andin 1996, the constitutional bill of the right-wing Union pour la démocratie française designed to‘secure women’s access to elected office’ as well as its bill providing for ‘a balanced representation ofpersons from both sexes in elections conducted according to proportional representation’.

8. See L’Express (6 juin 1996). 9. President of the association Choisir-La-Cause-Des-Femmes and a major figure of French feminism

in the 1970s who worked for the legalisation of abortion. See HALIMI, G., La Parité dans la viepolitique. Rapport de la Commission pour la parité entre les femmes et les hommes dans la viepolitique (Documentation française, 1999).

10. The French Constitution provides that if a constitutional amendment is passed by a simple majority inthe two houses, then it must be submitted to a popular referendum. If it is passed by a three-fifthsmajority of the two houses meeting together, no referendum is needed. The second option was chosento pass the constitutional amendment on women and men’s equal access to elected office.

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