Identity without Politics: Framing the Parity Laws and Their Implementation in French Local Politics

Abstract

This article provides an alternative approach to the arguments of “critical mass,” whose tenets assume that policies fostering women’s rights would arise from an increase in women’s political representation. Instead, the article argues that the cultural repertoires that are used to justify women’s higher numerical presence also matter. Indeed, different repertoires—such as claiming women’s inclusion into politics in the name of women’s interests or in the name of their difference—have different political outcomes. This case study of the French sex-parity laws, which ensures a 50‐percent quota of women in politics, explores the connection between the rationales to legitimize the laws and their implementation at the local level. This provides for, first, an investigation of how the requirement to make the parity claim compatible with French cultural repertoires on citizenship and sovereignty has led parity advocates to define sexual difference as universal. Then, drawing on interviews with local politicians, it shows how this rationale underlining sexual difference has failed to define gender relationships as political and, thus, to promote gender equality in local public policies.

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