The one who draws the most severe assessment of President Macron’s action would in fact be… the candidate Macron! It’s a paradox, but that’s what you have to understand about Emmanuel Macron’s words! He was on Monday March 7 the guest of the program “Face aux françaises”, on LCI. He took the opportunity to recall the initiatives taken by the government as part of this Great Cause. But he also said this: “Do we change a society in five years? No. That’s why the decision I made is to commit myself to another five years and to say: the great cause of the next five-year term, if the French men and women trust me, it will still be gender equality, because the work is not finished.”
“The work is not finished“, it is so far from finished that, if Emmanuel Macron were re-elected, gender equality would also be the great cause of his second five-year term. Yet it is a simple rhetorical rule. What we need to reaffirm, even harden, this is what was neither obvious nor applied, a way of recognizing, without saying so, that the results of this first mandate are not satisfactory.
Can we really transform society in the space of five years? Yes, we can. And even, we must, when we use expressions such as “great national cause”. In 2002, President Jacques Chirac declared that the fight against road insecurity would be a national cause. Five years, and voluntary and unpopular measures later, the number of road deaths had fallen by more than 40%. 10,000 deaths were avoided over the period.
Conversely, between 2017 and 2022, the number of women killed by the blows of their spouse or ex-spouse has not decreased significantly. As for the wage gap between men and women, it is still Marlène Schiappa, the Minister Delegate for Citizenship and former Secretary of State in charge of gender equality, who talks about it best: “Indeed, I think it’s a long-term fightdeclares Marlène Schiappa Tuesday March 8 on franceinfo, and on which there is urgency. The World economic forum has calculated that if we do nothing more than what we are already doing all over the world, we will achieve economic equality between women and men in the year 2234. Yes it is urgent to take even stronger measures.” There is an urgent need to take stronger measures. Fortunately, then, that this subject was not a great national cause! Otherwise, we could have started to wonder why not to have taken them earlier!
Equality between women and men ➡️ “We do not solve in five years problems that have existed for generations”, according to Marlène Schiappa. “There is an equal position gap which is due to the misogyny of society. It’s illegal.” pic.twitter.com/2077XuzEWn
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) March 8, 2022
There are, however, areas in which the action of the executive has been effective. The various governments have been more or less equal, the number of women in the National Assembly has greatly increased. These are indeed data that the President of the Republic has put forward. But this is what Emmanuel Macron replies when it is pointed out to him that the key positions are always occupied by men. “I have for a long time, in the five-year term, had a Secretary General of National Defense who was a woman and who is now Secretary General of the Government. This is the first position in our administration. Sorry, but these are proofs When the Minister of Defense, the Secretary General of the Government are women: it shows you that it is not just for, in a way, the gallery.
The Minister for the Armed Forces and the Secretary General of the Government are women. It’s true. In rhetoric, this is called an argument by example. In the scale of evidence, this is not nothing! But it’s not worth much either. If he had wanted to be a little more rigorous, Emmanuel Macron could have used an argument by enumeration, recalling, as did Tuesday March 8 Liberation, that three of the four sovereign ministers, the President of the National Assembly, the secretary general of the Élysée, the presidents of the two LREM parliamentary groups, the general delegate of LREM, the current Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister are all men! And, if he had wanted to go up another notch in terms of rigor, he could have used an argument based on aggregated data, as one of the French women who questioned him did, reminding him that 80% of cabinet directors within the GVT are men.
His whole policy is not a failure. It wouldn’t be true. On the other hand, one could wish that the words retain their meaning. A great cause of the quinquennium is supposed to bear fruit during the quinquennium. Otherwise, it has failed. Or maybe she was something else. At best, a simple priority in public action. At worst, pure political communication.