Towards Parity Democracy? Gender in the 2012 French Legislative Elections

Abstract

The victory of the Left in 2012, and the application of reinforced parity legislation, led to significant gains for women in French politics, with 27% women in parliament and 50% in government, including a powerful Women's Minister. However, a poor performance by the Right, and the concentration of women in less powerful positions, indicate that the battle for equality is not yet won. Sé golè ne Royal's bid to become France's first female Speaker also ended in drama and failure. Promises to remove all state funding for parties who do not respect parity in the future could be the most important outcome for women of this election.

How to become a députée – Lean to the left: Party differences and gender parity in the 2012 National Assembly elections

“…As shown in the figure, the percentage of females elected as deputies to the National Assembly rose from 19.6 per cent in 2007 to 26.5 per cent in 2012. These elections raised France to 38th place in international league tables for female representationan improvement from their former 84th ranking (Murray, 2013). Although this percentage is much lower than many other European nations, this increase is consistent with the steady increases in female representation in both the National Assembly and Senate elections since the parity law was implemented in 2001.…”

“…Much of the previous research on the impact of parity in France has centered on the 2002 and 2007 elections to the National Assembly (Murray, 2004(Murray, , 2008aBaudino, 2005;Southwell and Smith, 2007;Fréchette et al, 2008). In plurality districts, the factors that have been also deemed to have hindered the election of How to become a députée -Lean to the left female candidates include: (i) incumbency advantage (Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler, 2005); (ii) the party strategy of nominating female candidates in marginally unsafe districts (Murray, 2008a(Murray, , 2013; and (iii) membership in a center-right party (Caul, 1999(Caul, , 2001Sineau, 2002;Kittilson, 2006;Opello, 2006;Murray, 2007).…”

“…The push for increased representation among women had been building for several decades in French politics. This drive was spurred, in part, by France's relative low numbers of female politicians compared with most of its European neighbors (Dauphin and Praud, 2002;Murray, 2013) 1 . The percentage of female and minority representatives in legislative bodies is deemed important to many in France, and elsewhere, who argue that the absence of these demographic groups in a legislative body can have significant consequences for subsequent government policies (Jones, 1998).…”

France

“…A new cabinet of the left was installed, comprising 30 socialists, two Greens and two members of the Radical Party of the Left, including veteran Socialist Laurent Fabius as Foreign Minister, and former Minister for European Affairs (1997–2002) Pierre Moscovici as Finance Minister (Gouvernement.fr 2012a). This cabinet, which was the first French government to respect gender parity (see Murray ) fixed its attention on securing a majority in the legislative elections with the two rounds scheduled for 10 and 17 June, respectively.…”

“…Of the 155 female representatives, 104 were from the ranks of the Socialist Party. The Greens won 17 seats, assisted by their electoral pact with the Socialists, achieving more than 50 per cent female representation with their nine women MPs (see Murray ). Following the legislative elections, on 18 June Prime‐Minister Ayrault announced a broadly similar cabinet line‐up with few changes in personnel (see Table ).…”