Gender Quotas, Parity Reform, and Political Parties in France

Investigating the timing and nature of politicians' decisions to improve women's political representation, the author uses the case of the French Socialist Party to show that ideational and electoral factors have the biggest influence on party officials' decisions to adopt, increase, and implement gender-based quotas.

France is notorious for the underrepresentation of women in its halls of politics. Having been unsuccessful at implementing quotas for female candidates—unlike several of their European neighbors—France passed a gender parity law in 2000 that required all political parties to field an equal number of male and female candidates. Yet in the 2002 elections the main political parties fell well short of nominating equal numbers of male and female candidates. How did parity replace gender quotas as the preferred way to achieve greater representation for women in elected office? Why have these gender-based measures been embraced by some parties and not others? And, why do parties sometimes fail to implement quotas and parity? Gender Quotas, Parity Reform, and Political Parties in France considers this transition from quotas to parity, providing a history of French women''s rights and the French electoral process, as well as an examination of the roles of the Socialist and Gaullist political parties. Compelling and clearly written, Opello has created a work that bridges an existing gap in literature about contemporary France and will appeal to scholars of gender, politics, and France.