Feminists call on Hollande to make good his promise on parity
Following the success of the French Socialist Party in elections last month, women now constitute a quarter of MPs in the French parliament.
This lifts France from 69th to 34th in the world in terms of the proportion of women parliamentarians, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Britain is joint 55th.
Had another party won, it’s likely that women would have fared much worse – 37% of Socialist MPs are women compared with 14% of former president Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party.
The socialist president François Hollande also made good on his pre-election promise to ensure equal representation of women and men in his cabinet.
But this is a long way from the parity enshrined in law and pledged by Hollande prior to victory. Overall the proportion of female candidates standing for election fell from 41.6% in 2007 to 40% in 2012.
Feminists say that Hollande must do more. Thalia Breton of Osez le Féminisme (Dare Feminism) says, “We don’t want excuses from the political parties, we want them to start organising parity within their organisations.”
Réjane Sénac, a specialist in gender equality at Sciences-Po and the National Centre for Scientific Research, said that the fact that 73% of MPs are male reflects a national problem and called on Hollande to stop political parties receiving public funds untill they implement a policy of equality.
Axelle Lemaire (pictured above with Hollande) won the Northern Europe constituency, one of France’s 11 newly created overseas seats covering Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and the Baltics. She lives in London, France’s sixth biggest constituency.
Sadly another high profile female Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s former partner, lost her contest for the seat for La Rochelle to dissident Socialist candidate, Olivier Falorni.