Quotas Boost Women Pols

"Every country that has made progress on this issue has used some kind of quota system to deliver the change," says Clare Short, who helped develop the British Labour Party's strategy on women.

France lags behind

Unlike most of their European neighbors, Britain and France elect deputies individually, a system that forces parties to make hard choices between male incumbents and women newcomers.

"France is one of the last countries in Europe to elect candidates by a single vote, rather than by party lists, where you can equilibrate the number of men and women candidates," says Jean-Luc Parodi, secretary-general of the Paris-based French Political Science Association.

In France, the political will to do this has been hard to muster. As recently as March, some 75 percent of French deputies said they opposed the principle of parity between men and women in the legislature.

Many French deputies hold office for decades, as well as accumulating other local or regional mandates. For example, Prime Minister Alain Jupp is also mayor of Bordeaux, president of metropolitan Bordeaux, and leader of the Rally for the Republic Party (RPR).

"The more politicians rack up mandates, the less room they leave for others, especially women," says Sylvie Guillaume, who directs women's issues for France's Socialist Party.

"Things have to change for women. Political parties can't stay as cut off as they have been from society," says Anne-Marie Couderc, the RPR minister in charge of women's rights.

Women have also faced high levels of derision in French public life. Hours after Mr. Jupp appointed a record 12 women ministers to his Cabinet in 1995, they were dubbed "the Juppettes" by the French news media. Six months later, eight of the women were sacked in a Cabinet shuffle.

In the runup to France's May 25 vote, all parties pledged to limit the number of offices politicians can hold. All but the extreme-right National Front Party are also campaigning to increase the role of women in public life. But French politicians have stopped short of setting a quota of winnable seats for women.

Even Socialist leaders did not target winnable seats, as did their British Labour counterparts. Regional leaders were simply told to ensure that 30 percent of their candidates were women.

"There are districts that will be very difficult, but the so-called tenors of the majority are no longer unbeatable. [French conservatives] couldn't even convince their own rank and file that there was a need to change the representation of women in politics," says Socialist Guillaume.

Despite campaign pledges to improve access for women, the majority RPR and Union for French Democracy parties are fielding only 45 women to compete for 577 seats, or 7.8 percent of their candidates. "Women won't vote for women," says a close RPR adviser, on condition of anonymity. "It's a fact of life."

Politicians versus public opinion

But pollsters say that such views are lagging behind public opinion. Some 82 percent of French people in a survey last year said they favor a referendum on parity, and 80 percent favor forbidding politicians to occupy many posts at the same time, in order to liberate more positions for women.

"The notion that women won't vote for women is completely false. If anything, women have slightly more tendency to vote for women," says Roland Cayrol of the Paris-based CSA polling agency.

"What makes it difficult for women in France is the system of voting and a certain Mediterranean machismo. Women have made big strides in teaching, health professions, communications, and journalism, but not yet in politics or big business," says Mr. Cayrol.

With an 80 percent majority in the current legislature, France's majority parties face more of a problem than opposition challengers in dealing with incumbents who are unwilling to step aside for women newcomers.

"It's been tough to increase the number of women candidates, because we have so many incumbents who are men. They have been loyal, so we can't just tell them they can't run. But you'll see many more conservative women in next year's regional elections, where the RPR is committed to 30 percent women," says RPR minister Couderc.

Page: 1 | 2