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French Feminists Renegotiate Republican Universalism: The Gender Parity Campaign

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Abstract

This article explores the feminist campaign that led to the adoption of the gender parity laws (1999–2000), mandating an affirmative action policy to enhance women's representation in elected assemblies. After reviewing the history of demands for equalizing women's access to electoral office since the emergence of the second wave of feminism in France, shifting from quota to parity, it shows the discursive tactics used by proponents of parity to shape their claim within the terms of the dominant republican universalism, which was a priori hostile to the recognition of gender in political representation. The last section is a discussion of Joan Scott's recent analysis of the ‘refiguration’ of universalism in the discourses of the proponents of parity. The article concludes that these discourses both challenged and reinforced the dominant discourses in which they were embedded, in line with a long history of feminist challenges to the gender hierarchy.

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Notes

  1. In the ‘Loi constitutionnelle no 99-569 du 8 juillet 1999 relative à l'égalité entre les femmes et les hommes’, the French Parliament voted an amendment modifying two articles of the Constitution. First, to the article referring to sovereignty the following provision was added (Article 3): ‘The law favors the equal access of women and men to electoral mandates and elective functions’. Second, the article about political parties (Article 4) was made to specify that they ‘contribute to the execution of the principle set forth in the last section of Article 3 under the conditions determined by the law’ (Journal Officiel, 9 July 1999, 10175). The ‘Loi no 2000-493 du 6 juin 2000 tendant à favoriser l'égal accès des femmes et des hommes aux mandats électoraux et fonctions électives’ provides (1) a legal requirement of parité for the party list system (most notably for local, regional and European elections) and (2) financial incentives through the public funding of political parties for the legislative elections. For elections using list systems (municipal, regional, European, and some senatorial elections), parties are required to submit lists with equal numbers of men and women in a defined order. A financial incentive is used for the legislative elections (using a single member district electoral system): State subsidies to each party are reduced in proportion to the gap in the number of male and female candidates nationwide.

  2. In line with most comparative studies of women's movements (Offen, 1988; Beckwith, 2000; Mazur, 2001a), I use the term women's movement(s) to name movements ‘...characterized by the primacy of women's gendered experiences, women's issues, and women's leadership and decision making’ (Beckwith, 2000, 437); I refer to ‘feminists’ or ‘feminist movements’ to name groups or individuals seeking to ‘advance women's rights and/or status, however they are defined, and strike down gender-based hierarchies in society’ (Mazur, 2001a, 201).

  3. In 1993, Greece was the only European country to rank behind France as regards the political representation of women in the Parliament.

  4. However, these ‘first-wave’ organizations arguing for an increased presence of women (such as the ‘Union Féminine Civique et Sociale’ (UFCS) and the ‘Comité international de liaison des associations féminines’ (CILAF)) never asked for quotas in the 1970s.

  5. See, for example, Agacinski (1998, 1999), Fraisse (1997), Perrot (1999), Mossuz-Lavau (1998, 1999), Kristeva (1999).

  6. For example, a nationwide poll published in the 28 October 1996 issue of the weekly magazine Elle showed that 59% of the French population found that the implementation of quotas would be ‘rather a good thing’ to increase women's presence in political assemblies.

  7. The principle of ‘parité’ was mentioned in the section entitled: ‘Le pouvoir des citoyens : de la décision confisquée à la décision partagée’ (The power of citizens: from confiscated to shared decision).

  8. It must be noted that discourse-focused approaches do not systematically lead to an instrumental conception of the role of ideas. According to Bacchi, one should rather consider that activists are ‘in discourses’, that is, their interests are informed by ‘shared belief systems’, and ‘use discourses’, that is, ‘consciously deploy particular discursive frameworks for desired political purposes’ (Bacchi, 2004, 129). One thus needs to understand the discursive work of groups partly as (1) a conscious manipulation of the dominant frameworks of meaning in order to increase the cultural ‘resonance’ of their claims and thus their chances of success, and as (2) an embedded expression of these beliefs and values.

  9. Some opponents to parity also raised a ‘leftist’ critique, arguing that the reform would benefit only women who were already privileged (Sintomer, 2001; Bereni, 2006a; Lépinard, 2007b).

  10. In her report, Sledziewski wrote: ‘the definition of the human subject cannot omit the sexual difference, since it is as a man or a woman that this subject realizes her/his humanity, or, more radically, that he/she is. (…) The equal intervention of female citizens in the city's affairs is now considered as a necessary condition of the achievement of democracy. A democracy without women is not an imperfect democracy anymore. It is not a democracy at all’ (Sledziewski, 1992, 23, 27).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Amy Mazur, Daniel Sabbagh, and B.W. Corson for their helpful comments on a previous version of this text, although they are obviously not responsible for the thesis I developed here.

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  1. Equipe ‘Enquêtes, Terrains, Théories’, Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CNRS-ENS-EHESS), 48 Bd Jourdan, Paris, 75014, France

    Laure Bereni

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Bereni, L. French Feminists Renegotiate Republican Universalism: The Gender Parity Campaign. Fr Polit 5, 191–209 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200127

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