Today's Date:

In June 2000, an Act was promulgated in France which, for the majority of elections, established that in certain cases there must be an equal number of men and women candidates, and in others that this male/female parity must apply to the outcome of elections. The political class, under pressure from women’s groups and feminists, backed by public opinion, had had to recognize that it was no longer acceptable, more than half a century after women won the right to vote and to be elected, that over 90% of those elected to representative bodies should still be men. But the new measures were not adopted without difficulty. Gender parity also has its enemies.

Poor record of women’s representation in elected office
March towards parity
For or against parity
Some relevant books

On 21 October 1945, 5.6% of those elected to the National Assembly were women; by 1961 they were no more than 3.5%. It was in 1958 that women’s representation reached its lowest point, with 1.5% of deputies. Not until the 1980s did the figure "regain" the level at the time of Liberation (5.9% in 1986, 5.7% in 1988). After the 1993 parliamentary elections, there were 6.1% of women in the chamber. Things improved in 1997, thanks to the efforts of the Parti socialiste (PS) which, following a decision by Lionel Jospin, now reserves 28% of its constituencies for women candidates. But despite this progress (there were 10.9% of women deputies after the second round of voting in the parliamentary elections), France still ranks second to last in the European Union as concerns the representation of women in Parliament. Only Greece has managed to do worse than us. The situation is no better when it comes to general [department] councils (7.9% in 1998) and mayors (only 7.6% are women), or indeed the Senate (5.6%). The only areas where the situation is slightly different are the municipal [commune] councils (21.2% in 1995), regional councils (rising from 13% to 25.8% in 1998), and above all the European Parliament (40.2% of women in 1999). The government formed by Lionel Jospin in June 1997 marks a contrast with previous administrations. Of 26 ministers, ministers delegate and ministers of state, eight are women. And the subsequent appointment of three ministers of state (two of them women) increased the number of women in government to 11 out of 29. After the ministerial reshuffle of 27 March 2000, 11 of the 32 members of the government were women, i.e. 34.4%. But this should not obscure the fact that, in France, legislation is adopted by a Parliament over 90% of whose members are men.

Various reasons have been advanced to account for what may well be termed "the French exception". The denial of access to elected office suffered by women in our country is in line with a very long tradition. Indeed, in France, by contrast with what we see in many other European countries, women were excluded from succession to the throne. The Salic law, resurrected in the fourteenth century, stipulated that the crown could pass only to a male. The 1789 revolution, for its part, granted the suffrage to men qualified to exercise it (through payment of the poll tax), but denied it to women, setting the seal on their political exclusion. In 1848 this same approach resulted in no more than semi-universal suffrage. One could also adduce regularly-mentioned institutional reasons such as the uninominal (first-past-the-post) voting system, which gives established politicians an advantage, with existing deputies seeking re-election running their constituencies like a fiefdom and continuing to be represented there indefinitely since there is no retirement age in politics. Likewise, the practice of occupying more than one elective office, albeit limited by the Act of 30 December 1985, is seen by some as still being too prevalent, with the result that the most important jobs remain in the hands of too few people. A further restriction of this practice could help to bring more people into political life and make it more accessible to women, as well as to groups who are still under-represented in elected bodies. But the main reason today for the difficulty women experience in obtaining elective office has to do with the reluctance of the political parties which, with the exception of the Left and the Greens in the recent period, are masculine coteries functioning as a self-perpetuating closed shop, unwilling to take away a man’s position and give it to a woman. To this must be added the difficulties arising from the fact that women are still largely in charge of family life, even when they go out to work. In 60% of French households, men perform no domestic tasks at all. This does not create the best conditions for women to exercise political responsibilities, on top of everything else.

But France is so far behind in the representation of women compared with other northern European countries also because when she was at her most influential, in the 1970s, the feminist movement was not bothered about claiming political power. The fight was among other things about women’s control of their bodies, about housework, about equality in the workplace - but "parliamentary"-type action was not a source of conflict.

Times have changed: faced with women’s persistent difficulties in obtaining political responsibilities, in the early 1990s some women began to push a pretty radical demand: gender parity in elected bodies.

In the late 1970s and during the 1980s, the argument was mainly presented in terms of quotas. 1982 even saw the passing of an amendment to existing legislation to the effect that in municipal elections the lists of candidates should not include more than 75% of the same sex. But the Constitutional Council struck down this provision, on the grounds that citizens could not be divided "into categories". Some women were in any case unwilling to fight on this point, considering it humiliating that 53% of the electorate should finally be allowed only a quarter of the candidates.

In 1992 the demands changed. The idea of parity was in effect "launched" by the publication of the book by Françoise Gaspard, Claude Servan-Schreiber and Anne Le Gall, Au pouvoir citoyennes: liberté, égalité, parité (Women citizens to power: liberty, equality, parity), which calls for parity to be written into law in the following terms: "Elected bodies, at both local and national level, shall be composed of equal numbers of women and men". The formula suggested was an ingenious one. In the case of elections involving uninominal or single-member constituencies, a two-member system could be introduced: the number of existing constituencies would be divided by two, and in each of these new units the voters would be invited to vote for a "ticket" comprising a man and a woman.

The champions of parity enjoy the support of European bodies which are ahead of France in this area. As long ago as November 1989, a seminar was held in Strasbourg on "parity-based democracy", on the initiative of the Council of Europe. In November 1992, at the request of the Commission of the European Communities, the first European summit on women in government was held in Athens. Attended by women ministers and former ministers, the meeting adopted a Charter which proclaimed that democracy requires parity in the representation and administration of nations.

In France, women's associations were set up to defend the idea of parity. Other, long-standing organizations have also been making it their fight. On their initiative, Le Monde published on 19 November 1993 the "Manifesto of the 577 for a democracy based on gender parity". The number 577 was intended as a reference to the number of deputies in the National Assembly. Signed by 289 women and 288 men, it called for the adoption of an institutional Act couched in the following terms: "Assemblies elected at local and national level shall be composed of equal numbers of women and men". In 1996 another manifesto rekindled the debate. This was the "Manifesto of the ten for parity" published in L'Express on 6 June and signed by ten women, former ministers and senior figures from both Right and Left, a group that included both Simone Veil (UDF - Union pour la démocratie française) and Edith Cresson (PS).

Meanwhile, however, part of the left-wing political class had reacted to the challenge from the partisans of parity, and a number of member's bills were introduced in Parliament from 1994 onwards, calling inter alia for parity to be written into the Constitution. In 1994, in the European elections, six lists did in fact display parity, or near-parity: those of the PS (the first to announce its intentions in this matter), Parti communiste (PCF), Mouvement des citoyens (MDC) [a small centre-left party], Les Verts [the most well-represented ecologist party], Lutte ouvrière [left-wing] (led by Arlette Laguiller), and the "little" list formed by C. Cotten. In 1995, during the presidential election, women’s place in political institutions became for the first time an issue in an election campaign. The principal candidates, urged on by the champions of parity, were impelled to take a position on the issue and to undertake commitments. Jacques Chirac, elected on 7 May, kept one of his when he set up the "Parity Observatory" (by a decree of 18 October 1995). Attached to the Prime Minister’s office and composed of public figures chosen for their particular expertise, this unit, which is headed by a rapporteur-general, Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, deputy from Maine-et-Loire, is meant to produce studies and make proposals concerning the position of women. The "political parity" commission, jointly chaired by Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin and Gisèle Halimi, produced just one report, which was submitted to the Prime Minister on 11 December 1996. A debate without a vote was held on 11 March 1997 in the National Assembly, during which Alain Juppé, Prime Minister at the time, made a statement which fell far short of the expectations of the champions of parity:

"I am in favour of amending our Constitution to allow the law to introduce on a temporary basis, for example for ten years, measures to encourage women candidates in elections using a list poll system, the only elections that lend themselves to such an approach." (Journal officiel. Débats parlementaires, 12 March 1997).

Nothing came of this in practice, since on 21 April 1997 Jacques Chirac announced the dissolution of the National Assembly. In the subsequent early parliamentary elections, the Left was victorious, and - in the declarations at least - it was no longer a question of "measures to encourage women candidates", but of parity. The new Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, true in this regard to his campaign pledges, did in fact announce a constitutional amendment to this effect, on 19 June 1997, during his general policy statement in the National Assembly.

"The first necessity is to enable French women to participate unhindered in public life (...). A revision of the Constitution will be proposed, with a view to writing into it the objective of parity between women and men." (Le Monde, 21 June 1997).

This idea did not remain a dead letter. One year later (17 June 1998), on the government’s proposal, President Jacques Chirac signed a constitutional bill "on equality between men and women". It consisted of just one article:

"The following paragraph shall be added to article 3 of the Constitution of 4 October 1958: Statutes shall promote equal access by women and men to elective office and positions." During the parliamentary debate, a proposal was also adopted to amend article 4 of the Constitution (concerning political parties), in the following terms: "They [the parties] shall contribute to the implementation of the principle set out in the last paragraph of article 3 as provided by statute." Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution were duly amended after the Parliament was convened in Congress [joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate convened specially for the purpose of approving an amendment to the Constitution] at Versailles on 28 June 1999.

The next step was to start applying the parity principle in practice. On 6 September 1999, Dominique Gillot, then rapporteur of the new Parity Observatory set up by the Prime Minister, submitted a report in which she advocated a system of "alternating parity" for certain elections. On 8 December 1999, the government published a bill providing that in elections using a list poll system (municipal elections in communes of at least 3,500 inhabitants, regional and European elections, and elections to the Senate by proportional representation), 50% of the listed candidates must be women. But the bill said nothing about their position on the list. For parliamentary elections, too, the parties were to put forward 50% of women candidates or face financial penalties. It should be noted that France is the first country in the world to stipulate that for the majority of elections there must be as many women candidates as men. Countries wishing to increase the number of women in elected bodies have thus far adopted quotas not exceeding 33%. So this bill is a world first, but will need improvement if it is to be fully effective. During the first reading of the bill in the National Assembly, on 25 January 2000, the deputies adopted a number of amendments stipulating that, for European elections and elections to the Senate by proportional representation, in order to be admissible the lists must observe alternating parity, and that for regional and municipal elections (in communes of 2,000 or more inhabitants), parity was to be observed by requiring each list to be divided, from top to bottom, into blocks of six candidates of whom 3 must be women. The Senate rejected all these amendments, a joint committee was convened, but failed to arrive at any agreement. The bill was therefore sent back to the National Assembly, then to the Senate, then again to the Assembly for the final reading (on 3 May). Deputies agreed to raise to 2,500 the threshold for the application of the parity rule in municipal elections, but made no other concessions. The senators referred the text to the Constitutional Council, which endorsed it on 30 May 2000 with the exception of one point: the application of the Act to communes of fewer than 3,500 inhabitants in the case of municipal elections. The text therefore reverted to the threshold of 3,500 specified in the government’s original bill. The partisans of parity are thus close to their goal, but the arguments for and against parity have been very fierce, particularly among left-wing intellectuals and feminists (men and women), who have been divided.

To justify their position, the opponents of parity highlight the universality which they say the parity bill would jeopardize. Recalling the founding principles of our democracy, they maintain that it recognizes only the abstract citizen, i.e. a person who cannot be defined by any social, religious, cultural or sexual characteristic. To employ any criterion at all in the selection of representatives would mean breaking with the rule of strict equality, which must prevail among citizens and can exist only so long as only "abstract individuals" are recognized. Yet if it is accepted that only this abstract individual may legitimately be recognized, why is it a problem if elected bodies consist almost entirely of men? The representatives, whoever they are, and even if they are all men, supposedly speak on behalf of all those they represent (women and men). But, in fact, this is not the line taken by the opponents of parity. All of them, women and men alike, deplore this near-total absence of women from elected bodies.

How do these opponents of parity reconcile this recognition of the gender dimension of humanity with their refusal to see it written into law? Until recently, their answer was that the gender difference must not be written into law because any measure endorsing a difference was necessarily a step backwards. But some among them made an initial exception to this rule by proposing, from 1995 onwards, that political parties presenting a "suitable" number of women should receive an extra subsidy - which meant writing the gender difference into the Act on the financing of political parties. This already begged the question: how is it a less serious affront to the principle of universality to write the gender difference into the Act on the financing of political parties than to write it into the electoral legislation or the Constitution? In 1999, a number of opponents of parity called for there to be explicit mention of men and women in article 4 of the Constitution (to avoid putting it in article 3). But wouldn’t it be more of an affront to universalism to have the gender difference appear in the Constitution after all, on the pretext that it was in an article on political parties rather than on national sovereignty?

The opponents of parity also make much of the argument that if compulsory measures were adopted to promote the status of women in political life, women would be chosen because they are women, not for their expertise - as if men candidates were going to "be chosen" from among the members of political parties, and women candidates in a sort of no-man’s land, outside the political groups. According to the supporters of parity, if elections were held on the basis of parity, the parties would choose women candidates from among their women members - and they have many such - i.e. women who support their party’s ideas and are capable of fighting for a programme, women whose political commitments would already be well known. Exactly like the men, they would be elected because of their support for a political project, not just because they were women. They would represent men and women, and play an active part on all the issues referred to them. And why should these women party members be any less competent than the men who now sit in the elected bodies?

In the "manifesto" published by L’Express on 11 February 1999, the opponents of parity also accused their adversaries of "abandoning the principle of solidarity among victims of discrimination" and of ignoring "the economic, social and racial inequalities suffered by so many women". Yet the difficulties facing women are absolutely central to the concerns of those who support parity. And it seems to them that those inequalities and difficulties would be better taken into account in elected bodies comprising 50% of women than they are today. The political agenda would then be conceived in such a way that when, for example, unemployment was addressed, account would be taken of the particular impact it has on women. And the same would apply to all issues concerning part-time work (almost exclusively women’s lot), single-parent families (mostly headed by women), and any other problems likely to be discussed by the people’s elected representatives. To tackle the problems of women, isn’t it better to trust to elected bodies consisting of equal numbers of men and women, rather than bodies 90% of whose members are men?

We see that the debate over the effective access of women to citizenship has been extremely lively. In any event, there has never been so much discussion of women’s near-total exclusion from the political scene as there was in the last few years of the twentieth century. It may also be supposed that beyond parity in politics, these new Acts are helping to spread throughout society as a whole, in the economic, social and cultural fields, a parity between women and men that is still seriously wanting. In this sense, the "French exception", which has thus far connoted a grave lack of female representation, might well come to denote a major innovation in the defence of women’s rights.

Massuz-Lavau (Janine),
Femmes/Hommes. Pour la parité.
Paris, Presses de sciences Po, 1998.

Bataille (Philippe) and Gasparol (Françoise),
Comment les femmes changent la politique et pourquoi les hommes résistent.
Paris, La Découverte, 1999.

Martin (Jacqueline) ed.,
La Parité. Enjeux et mise en oeuvre
Toulouse, Presses universitaires du Mirail, 1998

Thébaud (Françoise),
Écrire l'histoire des femmes
Fontenay/Saint Cloud,
ENS Editions, 1998./.