Sexual difference and politics in France today

Feminist Studies

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 183-210

  Haase Dubosc, Danielle ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0040942626     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3216683     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. Translations from the French are mine throughout unless otherwise indicated. A first version of this article was presented at the symposium, "Theories and Practices of Sexual Difference in an European Context," held at Dartmouth College in March 1997. I developed some of my ideas on parity in "The View from Here: Or, Living in the Gap between the Different Takes on the Universal," differences 7 (spring 1995): 209-54.
2. Translations from the French are mine throughout unless otherwise indicated. A first version of this article was presented at the symposium, "Theories and Practices of Sexual Difference in an European Context," held at Dartmouth College in March 1997. developed some of my ideas on parity in "The View from Here: Or, Living in the Gap between the Different Takes on the Universal," differences 7 (spring 1995): 209-54.
3. See Geneviève Fraisse, La Différence des sexes (The difference between the sexes) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), and La Raison des femmes (The reason of women) (Paris: Plon, 1992). Fraisse, a philosopher and a scholar, was appointed interministerial delegate for the rights of women by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in November 1997 after he was heavily criticized for not having created a ministry for the Rights of Women. She is at the center of the current efforts to change the French Constitution to incorporate a law guaranteeing parity.
4. See Geneviève Fraisse, La Différence des sexes (The difference between the sexes) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), and La Raison des femmes (The reason of women) (Paris: Plon, 1992). Fraisse, a philosopher and a scholar, was appointed interministerial delegate for the rights of women by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in November 1997 after he was heavily criticized for not having created a ministry for the Rights of Women. She is at the center of the current efforts to change the French Constitution to incorporate a law guaranteeing parity.
5. Simone Weil was minister of health under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. She proposed and obtained the law granting abortion rights for French women. She served again in 1996 when Edouard Balladur was prime minister. Edith Cresson was the first woman prime minister of France, named by President François Mitterand.
6. Twenty-five percent of European Union "commissaires" are women. These are high-level administrative positions. A "plan for equality" for Europe encourages more recruitment and promotion of women into and within the various European agencies. Obviously, women are under represented in the European Union.
7. The Chamber of Deputies corresponded, within the French frame of the Fourth Republic, to the House of Representatives in the United States. Under the Fifth (and present) Republic, the National Assembly has replaced the Chamber of Deputies. Today, deputies are like U.S. congressional representatives.
8. Since the 1997 legislative elections, France moved to second-to-last position, with 10.9 percent of women in the National Assembly.
9. That is nevertheless what Françoise Gaspard, Claude Servan-Schreiber, and Anne Legal did with great clarity in their innovative and pioneering book, Au Pouvoir, citoyennes! Liberté, égalité, parité (Toward power, women-citizens! Liberty, equality, parity) (Paris: Seuil, 1992). The book achieved its purpose, which was to make the parity issue visible and to provoke debate and discussion.
10. It took more than 150 years for French women to gain rights under democracy. In 1884, a famous French feminist, Hubertine Auclert, asked for parity in all elected assemblies. See, among others, Fraisse, Raison des femmes; Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Patrick K. Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Steven K. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989); Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Les Feminismes en France, 1914-1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995); and Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
11. It took more than 150 years for French women to gain rights under democracy. In 1884, a famous French feminist, Hubertine Auclert, asked for parity in all elected assemblies. See, among others, Fraisse, Raison des femmes; Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Patrick K. Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Steven K. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989); Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Les Feminismes en France, 1914-1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995); and Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
12. It took more than 150 years for French women to gain rights under democracy. In 1884, a famous French feminist, Hubertine Auclert, asked for parity in all elected assemblies. See, among others, Fraisse, Raison des femmes; Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Patrick K. Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Steven K. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989); Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Les Feminismes en France, 1914-1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995); and Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
13. It took more than 150 years for French women to gain rights under democracy. In 1884, a famous French feminist, Hubertine Auclert, asked for parity in all elected assemblies. See, among others, Fraisse, Raison des femmes; Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Patrick K. Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Steven K. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989); Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Les Feminismes en France, 1914-1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995); and Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
14. It took more than 150 years for French women to gain rights under democracy. In 1884, a famous French feminist, Hubertine Auclert, asked for parity in all elected assemblies. See, among others, Fraisse, Raison des femmes; Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Patrick K. Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Steven K. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989); Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Les Feminismes en France, 1914-1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995); and Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
15. It took more than 150 years for French women to gain rights under democracy. In 1884, a famous French feminist, Hubertine Auclert, asked for parity in all elected assemblies. See, among others, Fraisse, Raison des femmes; Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Patrick K. Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Steven K. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989); Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Les Feminismes en France, 1914-1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995); and Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
16. It took more than 150 years for French women to gain rights under democracy. In 1884, a famous French feminist, Hubertine Auclert, asked for parity in all elected assemblies. See, among others, Fraisse, Raison des femmes; Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Patrick K. Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982); Steven K. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1989); Christine Bard, Les Filles de Marianne: Les Feminismes en France, 1914-1940 (Paris: Fayard, 1995); and Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).
17. Françoise Collin edits the French feminist periodical, Les Cahiers du Grif. She sets forth the problem of the modern exclusion of women in the following way: The French revolution and the advent of the so-called democratic era highlighted by the declaration of the Rights of Man does not end this tradition [of exclusion of women]. At most, inequality is thereafter disguised under the term of complementarity. In fact, proclaimed citizenship does not include women in what is called "universal suffrage." Rather, it consolidates the exclusion of women, as Greek democracy had done. [The] general horizon is that of a "metaphysics of the sexes" that separates men from women within humanity, men being the representatives of the universal and women of the particular, women being on the side of nature, men on the side of reason. Difference is always thought about in terms of inequality. And thoughts about equality, in order not to contravene their postulate, affirm that inequality is not the issue, but rather complementarity. See "Le Philosophe travesti ou le féminin sans les femmes" (The philosopher as transvestite), Féminismes au présent (Present day feminisms) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995), 206-7.
18. Françoise Collin edits the French feminist periodical, Les Cahiers du Grif. She sets forth the problem of the modern exclusion of women in the following way: The French revolution and the advent of the so-called democratic era highlighted by the declaration of the Rights of Man does not end this tradition [of exclusion of women]. At most, inequality is thereafter disguised under the term of complementarity. In fact, proclaimed citizenship does not include women in what is called "universal suffrage." Rather, it consolidates the exclusion of women, as Greek democracy had done. [The] general horizon is that of a "metaphysics of the sexes" that separates men from women within humanity, men being the representatives of the universal and women of the particular, women being on the side of nature, men on the side of reason. Difference is always thought about in terms of inequality. And thoughts about equality, in order not to contravene their postulate, affirm that inequality is not the issue, but rather complementarity. See "Le Philosophe travesti ou le féminin sans les femmes" (The philosopher as transvestite), Féminismes au présent (Present day feminisms) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995), 206-7.
19. The proceedings of the seminar were published in Projets Féministes: Actualités de la Parité (Feminist projects: The pertinence of parity today), nos. 4-5 (February 1996), ed. Marie-Victoire Louis; for Collin quotation, see 103.
20. Quoted by Eliane Viennot, feminist scholar and a parity militant, in "For Parity," Le Monde Diplomatique, 6 Mar. 1997.
21. Alain Juppé was prime minster under President Chirac from 1995 to 1997. Chirac called for new legislative elections in June 1997, hoping to reinforce his centrist majority. The contrary happened. A socialist-led left of center majority won, and Lionel Jospin became prime minister.
22. Gisèle Halimi successfully defended pro-abortion groups (along with feminist associations) demanding that rape be considered a major crime rather than a misdemeanor. She is the founder of the feminist reformist movement, Choisir.
23. Some of these problems came up in the United States when the Equal Rights Amendment was proposed and defeated. The French women's magazine, Elle, entitled its editorial page (3 Feb. 1997) "Parity: A Referendum for Women?" and divided it into two columns "against" and "for": Marie-Françoise Colombani, arguing against parity, concludes that women do have a vocation for politics but need a law to give them one day a week to work in their constituency, not a law which will "impose" them in government the way men "impose" themselves by the de facto elimination of women. Furthermore, she fears that women might be humiliated if the law failed to pass. Michèle Fitoussi, arguing for parity, states that it is true women lack time for politics but that a referendum is necessary and that the French people will vote in favor of it.
24. François Mitterand, quoted in Janine Mossuz-Lavau's excellent book, Women/Men for Parity (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 1998), 49. For readers who can read French, this is the most up-to-date knowledgeable book on the parity issue.
25. Gisèle Halimi made this point in a conference paper she gave at Dialogues de Femmes, a feminist association, on 15 Mar. 1998. Halimi's comments are to be found in the conference newsletter, 10.
26. Monique Dental, newsletter of Réseau Femmes Ruptures, May 1997, 15.
27. In October 1995, a questionnaire was sent to all Socialist Party members, asking them if they approved the objective of parity between women and men in all elected assemblies: 74.98 percent said yes, 11.5 percent said no, and 13.43 percent abstained. French right-wing newspapers never tire of reminding the public that Lionel Jospin's wife, Sylviane Agacinski, a philosopher, is pro-parity and has no doubt "influenced" him. This is in the best "woman behind the throne" tradition, dear to many French historians. Agacinski has recently published an interesting book on sexual difference, Politique des sexes (Paris: Seuil, 1998).
28. Perhaps the best source of information on the development of the parity movement is the newsletter Parité-Infos, edited by Claude Servan-Schreiber (twenty issues in all). I am indebted to Frédéric Besnier, "The Parity Movement at the Crossroads," Parité-Infos, no. 17 (March 1997): 2-4, for the chronology and the analysis of the political developments of the movement. In Parité-Infos (June 1997), we find the following breakdown: 32.3 percent of women candidates for the far Left, 26.8 percent for the Communist Party, 27.7 percent for the ecology movements, but only 7.7 percent for the RPR, centrist Right, 8.9 percent for the UDF, right-wing, and 12.1 percent for the Front National, far Right.
29. Perhaps the best source of information on the development of the parity movement is the newsletter Parité-Infos, edited by Claude Servan-Schreiber (twenty issues in all). am indebted to Frédéric Besnier, "The Parity Movement at the Crossroads," Parité-Infos, no. 17 (March 1997): 2-4, for the chronology and the analysis of the political developments of the movement. In Parité-Infos (June 1997), we find the following breakdown: 32.3 percent of women candidates for the far Left, 26.8 percent for the Communist Party, 27.7 percent for the ecology movements, but only 7.7 percent for the RPR, centrist Right, 8.9 percent for the UDF, right-wing, and 12.1 percent for the Front National, far Right.
30. Mossuz-Lavau, 64.
31. Gisèle Halimi. "Feminine Identity: Biology or Social Conditioning?" in Femmes: Moitié de la terre, moitié du pouvoir. Plaidoyer pour une démocratie paritaire (Women: Half of the world, half of the power. A plea for a parity democracy), ed. Gisèle Halimi (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 101-8. Antoinette Fouque, an essentialist theoretician and psychoanalyst, best known as the founder of the Psychoanalysis and Politics feminist movement in the 1970s (and as the co-optor of the name "Women's Liberation Movement" which she legally declared as the trade name of her feminist association-an astounding commercial move) is pro-parity. She created a more recent association called The Alliance of Women for Democracy that began a movement called "Parity 2000." She ran in second place (and was elected) on the list of a left of center political movement, Énergie Radicale.
32. Halimi, Femmes, 205.
33. Geneviève Fraisse spoke on this point at the defense of her Doctorat d'État dissertation, "La Différence des sexes," in April 1997 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales, and Julia Kristeva recently elaborated the same notion of equality as third term at the Simone de Beauvoir conference held at University of Paris VII in March 1997.
34. Geneviève Fraisse spoke on this point at the defense of her Doctorat d'État dissertation, "La Différence des sexes," in April 1997 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales, and Julia Kristeva recently elaborated the same notion of equality as third term at the Simone de Beauvoir conference held at University of Paris VII in March 1997.
35. See Michèle Riot-Sarcey, with Helena Hirita, Daniele Kergoat, Eleni Varikas, "Parité ou Mixité," in Hors Champs 7 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1993), 117-18.
36. See "Founding Anew or Mending Democracy? Critical Reflections on the Demand for Parity of the Sexes," Nouvelles Questions Féministes 16 (winter 1996): 81-127.
37. Françoise Laborie, in Projets Féministes, nos. 4-5 (February 1996): 35.
38. Michèle Riot-Sarcey and Eleni Varikas, "Equality: An Idea to Be Rehabilitated." I am grateful to the authors for having communicated their paper to me before publication.
39. "Parité ou Mixité," 118.
40. Michèle Le Doeuff launched a virulent attack against Eliane Viennot in Nouvelles Questions féministes, 16 (winter 1996): 14, calling her one of the patriciennes. See her "La Parité contre."
41. Michèle Le Doeuff launched a virulent attack against Eliane Viennot in Nouvelles Questions féministes, 16 (winter 1996): 14, calling her one of the patriciennes. See her "La Parité contre."
42. "Man, Woman, Person, and 'Politically Correct,'" Le Monde, 29 Mar. 1997, 1.
43. Joan Scott "'La Querelle des femmes' in the late Twentieth Century," (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies, University of Kentucky, Lexington, 22 Mar. 1997, 14).
44. See Mona Ozouf, Les Mots des femmes (The words of women) (Paris: Fayard, 1995), especially her concluding essay, "On French Singularity," in which she argues that U.S. feminism, being differentialist rather than universalist, pits women against men. For her, French women have everything to lose if they follow the "American feminists."
45. Elizabeth Badinter, quoted in Le Monde, 12 June 1996, 2. Earlier, in an interview given to the French national weekly, Le Nouvel Observateur (19-25 May 1994), Badinter states that because U.S. women have fewer social rights than French women, for example, regarding childcare, U.S. feminists who struggle for women in a basically hostile environment take embattled positions. In contrast, she claims that French women have almost nothing to demand in terms of law and therefore no reason to take to the streets. Her position is untenable when one considers the massive unemployment of French women, the number at poverty level, the continuing violence against women, and the unequal pay they receive for equal work.
46. Elizabeth Badinter, quoted in Le Monde, 12 June 1996, 2. Earlier, in an interview given to the French national weekly, Le Nouvel Observateur (19-25 May 1994), Badinter states that because U.S. women have fewer social rights than French women, for example, regarding childcare, U.S. feminists who struggle for women in a basically hostile environment take embattled positions. In contrast, she claims that French women have almost nothing to demand in terms of law and therefore no reason to take to the streets. Her position is untenable when one considers the massive unemployment of French women, the number at poverty level, the continuing violence against women, and the unequal pay they receive for equal work.
47. Scott, 17 (my emphasis).
48. See Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1997, 7-8.
49. Christine Delphy, ibid.
50. Actualité de la Parité, 66-67.
51. Janine Mossuz-Lavau and Anne de Kervasdoué, Les Femmes ne sont pas des hommes comme les autres (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997), 272.
52. Lionel Jospin, quoted in Le Monde, 10 Mar. 1998, 31.
53. Ibid., 10.
54. Jospin stated in an interview given to Le Monde on 10 Mar. 1998: "I want...to propose . . . equal access for women and men to political but also to economic and social life. Once the constitutional revision is acquired . . . we will be able to act through legislative channels to favor political entry for women and also their professional and social promotion."
55. As reported in Le Monde, 8 Apr. 1998, 5.
56. Thierry Bréhier, in Le Monde, 21 Apr. 1998, explains the procedure for constitutional reform. In his view, which contradicts that of Christine Delphy and Françoise Gaspard, those seeking to promote parity need to ask for an amendment because the Constitutional Council had ruled, in 1982, that the law on quotas for political representation of women in local elections was unconstitutional.
57. Gisèle Halimi's opinions are to be found in the newsletter, Dialogues de Femmes.
58. Françoise Gaspard, "La Parité se heurte-t-elle à des contraintes juridiques?" (Does parity face legal constraints?) (paper presented at "Parity: Issues and Implementation," an international colloquium held in Toulouse, February 1998). My thanks to Gaspard for having sent me a copy of her text before publication.