France passed gender parity laws in 2000 stating that all political parties should include equal numbers of men and women on party lists. Priscilla Lewis Southwell writes that despite the new laws leading to an initial increase in female representatives, this growth has stalled in recent elections. She argues that one of the major reasons for this is that France also implemented a number of additional electoral reforms in 2003 which undermined the effectiveness of gender parity rules. She calculates that the reforms may have prevented as many as 38 female candidates from being elected since 2001

Southwell, Priscilla Lewis

LSE Research Online

13/09/2013Gender parity laws in France have been undermined byelectoral reforms which work against female candidatesblogs.lse.ac.uk /europpblog/2013/09/13/gender-parity-laws-in-france-have-been-undermined-by-electoral-reforms-which-work-against-female-candidates/France passed gender parity laws in 2000 stating that all political parties should include equal numbers ofmen and women on party lists. Priscilla Lewis Southwell writes that despite the new laws leadingto an initial increase in female representatives, this growth has stalled in recent elections. Sheargues that one of the major reasons for this is that France also implemented a number ofadditional electoral reforms in 2003 which undermined the effectiveness of gender parity rules. Shecalculates that the reforms may have prevented as many as 38 female candidates from beingelected since 2001.France engaged in two inter-related, almost contradictory, types of electoral reform during the pastdecade – the introduction of gender parity and the structural reform of its Senate and European parliamentary (EP)elections. The latter reform served to thwart gender parity in several ways. The Raffarin electoral reforms of 2003reduced the potential for the election of more female politicians, by the greater use of plurality districts in Senateelections. In addition, the change to regional districts for elections to the European Parliament created a situation inwhich male bias in party lists, even under proportional representation (PR), worked to the disadvantage of femalecandidates. Party proliferation, although not widespread in Senate PR districts, also reduced the number ofsuccessful female Senate candidates.These developments help to explain why parity law has resulted, after one decade, in only a modest increase in thenumber of female officeholders in France. My research also underscores that quota provisions can be circumventedor minimised by other modifications of the electoral system, but it also confirms the extent to which incumbentofficeholders go to considerable lengths to remain in office.Gender Parity in FranceIn 2000, a parity law was passed requiring all parties to present an equal number of female and male candidates onthe party lists for those elections conducted via proportional representation (PR) – that is, the European Parliament,a majority of seats to the national Senate, and municipal and regional elections.This gender parity law was first implemented in 2001, which resulted in the proportion of women town councilorsrising from 25.7 per cent to 47.5 per cent in municipalities with more than 3500 residents. Similarly, in Senateelections, in those 74 races in which the parity law was applicable (those using PR) there was an increase from 5 to20 female senators. In those 28 remaining Senate contests where parity was not directly applicable (those using atwo-round plurality (TRP), the number of women stayed the same, at two.From the standpoint of gender parity, the first set of post-parity elections appeared to be moderately successful.However, these initial gains in female representation appear to have stagnated. The percentage of women electedto the National Assembly has continued to rise, but only modestly so. However, the most recent EuropeanParliamentary elections, and the 2008 Senate elections, have actually shown a slight decrease in the percentage ofwomen elected to office.As a possible explanation, we can turn to other electoral reforms that were adopted shortly after the parity law – theRaffarin reforms of 2003. Like most electoral reforms, the details are complicated, but these changes had anadverse effect on gender parity. In 2003, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, as leader of the UMP (Union pour unMouvement Populaire) introduced laws that changed the method by which elections to the Senate and the EP areconducted.1/4Ségolène Royal, 2007 Parti socialiste Presidential candidate (Credit: Partisocialiste, CC-BY-SA-3.0)Changes in elections to the European Parliament:even “zippering” didn’t helpBefore these reforms, elections to the EP wereconducted by PR, with the entire nation as the soleconstituency, with national party lists. However, since2003, there have been eight regional districts withdistinct party lists of EP candidates in each district.Although these districts still use a PR method, thischange can reduce the chances of female candidatesbeing elected.Specifically, although parity law requires party lists toalternate men and women (a ‘zippering’ system), amajority of party lists have been headed by malecandidates. In those situations where a party receivesonly one or an uneven number of seats in a district, animbalance occurs in the number of male and femalecandidates who actually fill those seats within theirparty. Although this imbalance is slight with one nationalconstituency, as was the case in the 1999 elections tothe EP, the potential for such bias against femalecandidates becomes larger as the number of districtsincreases.For example, the Socialist Party captured 31 seats inthe 2004 EP elections. If the country had been onenationwide district, as in 1999, at least 15 of theseSocialist MEPs would have been required to be female by parity law. However, the disaggregation of the Socialistvote across the country meant that, in some of these eight districts, an uneven number of seats were won by theSocialists, resulting in a male bias. The actual Socialist delegation to the EP, following the 2004 election, was 18male MEPs and 13 female MEPs, a loss of two potential female MEPs. The cumulative effect of such male bias forall parties was a net loss of six female MEPs in 2004, under these new rules. A similar pattern occurred for both theUMP and the Socialist parties in the 2009 EP election, but this male bias was offset by two smaller parties, theMovement for Democracy (MoDem) and the Greens (Verts) who, in contrast, had a female candidate heading theirparty list in three out of the eight regional districts.It’s even worse in the French Senate electionsAs noted above, the reforms for the Senate increased the number of districts that use a TRP system, as comparedwith the PR method. The electoral system for this body had traditionally used a plurality (TRP) method only for thosedistricts with fewer than three seats to be chosen – approximately one-third of all seats (37 per cent in the 2001Senate elections). However, the Raffarin reforms raised this threshold to three seats per district, resulting in 35 percent of all senators being chosen in plurality districts in the 2004 elections, and a markedly increased figure of 65per cent in the 2008 elections. As such, the effect of this reform did not really become apparent until the later 2008elections, although the percentage of closed-list proportional method (PR) was much higher in 2011.Another roadblock: party proliferationThe phenomenon of ‘party proliferation’ in Senate elections involves a scenario where party members bolt from theirown party to form a new, temporary party, presumably to bypass parity requirements for PR districts. By such astrategy, two (or more) male incumbents can avoid the parity requirements for PR districts that require the2/4alternation of male and female candidates on their party lists.Our examination of the most recent four Senate elections (2001, 2004, 2008 and 2011), reveals 18 districts out of 58total PR districts in which certain members of the centre-right party (UMP) ran instead as a head of an alternativeparty list, usually called ‘Divers Autres ’, or even with the same coalition name (LMAJ) as occurred in 2011. In each ofthese 18 districts, the result was the election of one male UMP Senator, and one male ‘Autres’ Senator, rather than asecond-place female on the UMP party list, as required by the parity law. Despite the ballot identifying them asmembers of different parties such as DA, their official Senate biography listed these senators as members of theUMP party.How many more women would have been elected? Perhaps thirty-eight?The Table below is an estimate of how female candidates might have fared in these post-2001 elections, if theprevious electoral rules had been in place, as well as the impact of party proliferation.Table: Estimation of the effect of the Raffarin Reforms and party proliferation on the number of womenelected to the Senate and European Parliament (2004-2011)Note: Pearson Correlation significant at 0.05 level for both Senate and European Parliamentelections.Source: French Ministry of the InteriorFirst, we can examine those Senate districts with three seats at stake, that is, those that began using a pluralitysystem in the 2004 election after the Raffarin reforms. Looking at these 24 districts, we can ‘re-run’ the races withthe previously-used PR system to determine whether the prior rules might have altered the gender balance of theSenate delegation. In doing so, an assumption is made that the voters (primarily municipal councilors) would havevoted in the same manner, along party lines. The results suggest that more than 18 women would have beenelected in these three Senate elections if the Raffarin reforms had not been adopted and the previous PR methodhad been used in these three-seat districts.For example, in the Senate district of ‘Indre et Loire’ in 2011, the left-leaning preferences of voters resulted in theelection of two members of the Socialist Party and one Communist Party member – all men. Had this district usedthe previous 2001 PR method, the parity law would have required the Socialist Party to have a party list with at leastone woman among the top three spots on their party list. Therefore, a minimum of one female Socialist member3/4would have been elected, instead of the actual result of three male candidates in this district. In all of the four suchdistricts in 2011, a similar scenario occurred, resulting in the loss of four potential female Senators. For the 2004and 2008 Senate elections, similar results occurred, but more markedly so because there were more TRP contestsin these election years – a loss of seven potential female Senators both in 2004 and 2008 — primarily because of achange in electoral rules.This table also incorporates the similar estimates for EP elections, and party proliferation in the 2004, 2008 and2011 elections. That is, we looked at the actual vote totals in all these elections, but assumed that the EP electionswould have stayed nationwide, and that party members would not have been able to temporarily defect from theirown party in CPR districts. The cumulative effect of all three of these phenomena is remarkable. Had the previouselectoral rules been in effect, and had parties been prevented from running two of its candidates on different partylists, it is likely that a substantially increased number, perhaps 38, of women would have been elected to office inFrance.Clearly, there are other possible explanations for this rather modest increase in the number of women in Frenchpolitics. However, the ‘rules of the game’ were undoubtedly an important variable. The Raffarin reforms had adefinitive impact, and, most likely, were adopted with at least awareness of the electoral consequences for parity.Certainly, the headship bias and party proliferation did not occur unwittingly. The parliamentary debate over theseelectoral reforms in 2003 indicates that one of the reasons for the adoption of the EP reform was to increase turnoutin EP elections by offering candidates with closer local ties to the voters. However, it is a bit more difficult to besanguine about the increase in the number of plurality districts for Senate elections, as Senators were quite open intheir opposition to parity law.It appears that supporters of gender parity should push for a return to more proportionality in Senate elections, andconsider whether the headship of party lists should come under greater scrutiny for all PR districts, including theeight regional EP ones. Reining in party proliferation would also be a difficult task, but unless some recognition ofthese varied obstacles to parity are made by the national legislature or the largest parties, the impact of Frenchparity law will remain quite modest.For a longer discussion of this topic see the author’s recent article in French PoliticsPlease read our comments policy before commenting .Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/15nhtGt _________________________________About the authorPriscilla Lewis Southwell – University of OregonPriscilla Lewis Southwell is Professor of Political Science and the Department Head of theDepartment of Political Science at the University of Oregon. Her research interests include politicalbehaviour, US politics, and European politics.4/4

Gender parity laws in France have been undermined by electoral reforms which work against female candidates

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