Twenty Years of Parité Under the Microscope: Parties Play with Rather Than by the Rules

This paper tells the story of the implementation of the French approach to a 50:50 gender quota, parité, applied to all elections, since it was codified in an amendment to the Constitution in 1999. Despite the significant variation in electoral rules and political dynamics in different electoral contests the numerical representation of women has steadily increased since 1999, although to varying degrees across elections and that gatekeepers have accepted parity as a principle through a new “parity grammar with both of these developments suggesting that the entrenched dominant gender order may very well be in the process of crumbling. At the same time, reflecting the larger theme of the proposed roundtable, roadblocks and resistance to real parity and quality representation still remain through the predominantly men gatekeepers in the political parties who play with the new parity rules instead of by them. Thus, meaningful gender transformation in the political realm has yet to be achieved.