Gendering the Fifth Republic: The French Women's Movement at the Turn of the 21st Century

By contrast, parties and politicians of the right have been quite reticent about promoting gender parity in public life. In the spring of 1995, Jacques Chirac's new prime minister, Alain Juppe, appointed nine more women to cabinet than his conservative predecessor, Edouard Balladur, thereby boosting women's share of cabinet posts to 12 (4 ministers and 8 secretaries of state) or 28.6% (12/42).(19) However, this show of goodwill was short-lived; in November a cabinet shuffle left only 4 women in cabinet (2 ministers and 2 secretaries of state out of 32 members or 12.5% women).(20) Shortly before this shuffle, the Juppe government had announced the establishment of the Observatoire de la parite (or parity watchdog) to be chaired by the prime minister and designed to report periodically on women's place in state and society. [Gisele Halimi] was to serve as the Observatoire's reporter. In March 1997, Prime Minister Juppe read her report in a quasi-empty National Assembly. Clearly, gender parity was not a priority of French deputies, the majority of whom were at the time from conservative parties. Last but not least, the tug-of-war that took place between the left-wing National Assembly elected in 1997 and the right-wing Senate with regards to the government's constitutional bill on gender parity is quite telling. First, the National Assembly insisted that the wording of the bill be strengthened before approving it. The new version of the bill stated that the law was to determine (rather than favour) women and men's equal access to elected office. The Senate, however, refused to support this new version. To ensure that the Senate would pass the bill the government had to revert back to its initial version. As a result, Article 3 of the Constitution now reads as follows: "[l]a [Loi] favorise l'egal acces des femmes et des hommes aux mandats et aux fonctions electives".(21) Obviously, the Senate was not ready to outdo the government's efforts to alter men's monopolization of political power. Nevertheless, it is also important to recognize that the popular actions and discourse of the women's movement to promote gender parity have forced political parties and elites to finally address women's under-representation in politics. The early 1990s saw the emergence of new women's associations dedicated to fighting for gender parity in public life as well as the mobilization of established women's associations around this issue. The first association for gender parity wa