When one considers the issue of gender and male dominance in politics, France has always been quite peculiar. It was the first country to legalize universal male suffrage, and one of the last to accept universal franchise “tout court”. At the end of the nineteen-eighties, France was one of the countries with less women elected in political bodies. This was in sharp contrast with women’s role in society at large, because French women were not less emancipated than the average European women. The constitutional law on parity between men and women in 1999 imposed the objective of equality between men and women in political representation. This has produced important changes both in elections with proportional electoral system and in the political sphere. Nevertheless, resistances have been huge and the outputs are unsatisfactory for elections based on majority electoral system, for the election of the presidents of local governments, and for the repartition of official positions in executive at all levels. The paper will try to assess these problems focusing on the discourse dimension. After giving a few empirical insights, it will draw a conceptual map of the French debate, insisting on its peculiarity in respect with other national discussions. Following Joan Scott, it will insist on the peculiarity of French republicanism, both for the historical understanding of French backwardness and for the content of the present debates. It will also add a few perspectives scaling up the conclusions drawn for the French context.
