Drop in the number of female MPs shows ongoing battle for gender parity in French politics
France's parliamentary election has sent fewer women MPs to the National Assembly than the previous cycle – the result of failures to discuss gender parity during this year's election campaigns says political podcaster Léa Chamboncel.
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After Sunday's poll, women will occupy 215 of the 577 seats in parliament – the equivalent of 37.26 percent.
That's 2 percent fewer than in 2017, when Emmanuel Macron came to power and championed gender balance.
"Macron made gender equality a strong campaign issue; he called for women to come and run as candididates with LREM, and it worked," says Chamboncel, author of More Women in Politics! and founder of the Popol political podcast.
In 2012, Socialist president François Hollande had set the ball rolling with France's first gender-balanced government.
"The big problem now is that the issue of gender equality didn't get mentioned during the presidential election campaign," Chamboncel says.
"We just stopped talking about it as if the fact we'd had 38 percent women in the National Assembly meant the problem was sorted. But clearly it isn't."
Chamboncel had already warned a drop in female representation in parliament was likely. "It's very detrimental and worrying for the future of women in politics in France," she adds.
France is ranked 33rd out of 185 spots on the Inter-Parliamentary Union's monthly ranking of women in national parliaments, lagging behind some of its European neighbours.
But some French parties are faring better than others.
The right-wing Republicans party (LR) hovers at the bottom with 29.5 percent women MPs; the newly formed left-wing Nupes alliance has 43.6 percent; Macron's Together coalition has 40.4 percent (down 10 points compared to 2017), while the far-right National Rally party has 37.1 percent.
Parity law
In 2000, France introduced ground-breaking legislation under Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin forcing the lists for regional, municipal, senatorial and European elections to respect gender balance in order to be registered.
But for parliamentary elections, the law simply encourages parity by levying financial penalties on political parties with fewer than 50 percent women.
The Republicans have been the most penalised over the last five years. In 2021 they were fined €1.78 million for not meeting the threshold.
Chamboncel welcomes the steady progress France has made on gender parity since the law was introduced in 2000. Prior to that the National Assembly had less than 10 percent women in its ranks.
But she regrets change has only come through punitive measures.
"It's been over 70 years since women were allowed to run for office and we needed to wait till 2000, with this law, to get more women on board," she told RFI.
"The political class is so sexist, so dominated by men, that we needed to implement quotas basically, in order for women to be let into the democratic institutions."
Listen to a conversation with Léa Chamboncel in the Spotlight on France podcast
Structurally sexist
Last month Elisabeth Borne was appointed Prime Minister, becoming the first woman to hold the post since Edith Cresson in 1991-1992.
Borne dedicated her nomination to girls throughout France.
"Follow your dreams," she said, adding that "nothing must slow down the struggle for women to be prominent in society".
What seemed like an inspirational speech contained an ambigious message says political scientist Réjane Sénac.
"It's a very ambivalent message because it leaves you thinking the problem is mainly girls and women putting the brakes on themselves, just girls lacking ambition," she told RFI.
"It suggests the problem isn't structural, systemic, collective."
"It denies the fact that gender inequalities are not due to timidity of lack of confidence but a political and economic regime that is structurally sexist."
Seen but not heard
While more women are clearly going into politics nowadays, the reality behind the numbers is that "a lot of women want to run for office, get appointed, but don't have much power," says Chamboncel.
"The biggest decisions are still made by men."
A report by Oxfam France in March this year found that while 48 percent of Macron's LREM parliamentary group during his first term was women, men held most of the "strategic and prestigious positions".
Men headed up 80 percent of ministerial cabinets, while two-thirds of the advisers at the prime minister's office and the Elysée were male, the report said.
Meanwhile the law on parity, while ensuring gender-balanced lists, has no impact on getting women into decision-making positions in local government.
"The law says nothing about the top posts whether mayors or presidents of municipal and regional councils," says Sénac.
And while women are more visible on the political scene, they're not necessarily heard.
A poll in 2017 showed female MPs accounted for just 4 percent of speaking time in parliament.
Changing mentalities
The drop in the number of female MPs this year, however slight, shows the system of penalties is not sufficient to bring about gender parity, Chamboncel warns.
"You can make all the laws you want, all the bills you want, but so long as there isn't a strong political will behind that, nothing will change. And we need change."
With this in mind she's launched Popol, a political podcast devoted entirely to women.
Guests are politicians, elected officials or working in civil society, united by the difficulties they face and the desire to succeed on an uneven playing field.
Chamboncel was inspired by her own bleak memories of being invited as a political editor onto TV chatshows.
"I push the door before entering the studio and see three men over 60," she says. "They look at me like I don't know anything about politics. Their attitude is like 'what men say is true and what women say is 'are you sure about that?'
"There's a feeling you're not in the right place. So I needed to create this safe place for women where they're not cut off when they talk, and where we take them seriously."
Chamboncel also talks about politics in a different way – "neither boring nor violent".
Her bet seems to have paid off. Popol has gained traction, and an increasing number of male fans.
"The transformation won't happen without men," she says. "Everyone has to be a feminist."
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