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

This article provides an alternative approach to the argumentsof "critical mass," whose tenets assume that policies fosteringwomen’s rights would arise from an increase in women’spolitical representation. Instead, the article argues that thecultural repertoires that are used to justify women’shigher numerical presence also matter. Indeed, different repertoires—suchas claiming women’s inclusion into politics in the nameof women’s interests or in the name of their difference—havedifferent political outcomes. This case study of the Frenchsex-parity laws, which ensures a 50-percent quota of women inpolitics, explores the connection between the rationales tolegitimize the laws and their implementation at the local level.This provides for, first, an investigation of how the requirementto make the parity claim compatible with French cultural repertoireson citizenship and sovereignty has led parity advocates to definesexual difference as universal. Then, drawing on interviewswith local politicians, it shows how this rationale underliningsexual difference has failed to define gender relationshipsas political and, thus, to promote gender equality in localpublic policies.