Which political formation most respects the parity between the candidates and candidates it has invested in the legislative elections on 12th and 19th June next? According to the president of the MoDem, François Bayrou, the outgoing presidential majority presents “the balance of women and men in the nominations (…) the most precise and the most perfect of all the French parties”. But did Emmanuel Macron’s relative tell the truth or fake at the microphone of franceinfo, Monday, May 16?
To answer this question, franceinfo studied the lists of nominations made public by the main political parties and compiled in the collaborative database on elections NSPPolls. The candidacies of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), which brings together La France insoumise, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, were thus examined; those of Ensemble!, composed in particular of La République en Marche, MoDem and Horizons; those of the National Rally; those of Reconquest! ; finally, those of the Republicans.
It appears that, contrary to what François Bayrou asserts, the nominations of the outgoing presidential majority are not the most equal, with 269 women and 287 men invested, that is to say 48.4% of candidates. The RN is approaching parity, with 268 women and 279 men invested, or 49% of candidates. On the LR side, there are 166 women out of 419 candidates listed, or 39.6% of candidates. Eric Zemmour’s party, Reconquest!, brings up the rear: it has invested only 31 women for 54 men, ie 36.5% women and 63.5% men.
Conversely, Nupes goes beyond strict gender parity. In the current state of nominations, the union of the left is the camp which invested the highest proportion of women: 282 candidates out of 546 people invested, that is to say a rate of female candidates of 51.6%.
If the Nupes as a whole has more women than men, the parties that make it up are not all as good students individually. The PS has invested 35 candidates against 39 candidates, or 53% of men. The PCF, for its part, fully respects parity, with 25 women and 25 men invested on its lists. EELV has for its part invested more women than men: 51 candidates for 48 candidates, or 51.5% of contenders for deputy. Finally, LFI also invested more women than men: 171 against 152, or 52.9% of female candidates.
Failure to respect parity is not without consequences for political parties. Since June 6, 2000, a law provides for a financial penalty for parties that do not present 50% of candidates of each sex in the legislative elections. In 2014, the penalty was even reinforced. If the lists of nominations show more than 2% difference in relation to parity, the law provides that the public allocations calculated according to the number of votes obtained in the first round of the legislative elections are reduced. “of a percentage equal to 150% of the difference” to parity.
Some parties have thus been sanctioned at the end of previous legislative elections. In 2022, the amount of the “parity modulation” for Les Républicains thus amounted to 1.8 million euros. And for good reason, the right-wing party had presented only 182 women for 278 men in 2017, or just under 40% of candidates. La France insoumise had also been sanctioned with 252,000 euros for not having invested enough women: 262 out of 547 candidates, or 47.9% of candidates, just below the legal threshold.
Despite this financial penalty, “some parties make a cost-benefit calculation and prefer to pay penalties to obtain more seats because the party allocations also depend on their number of seatsnotes Mariette Sineau, political scientist and co-author of a book on the place of women in politics: Women and the Republic (La documentation française, 2021). If presenting fewer women, by renewing the outgoing men, allows them to have more seats, some parties believe that it is better to have capital losses on the first part of the endowments, thinking that the parity tax costs less than what the legislative rent yields.”
“Parity is more difficult to achieve in legislative electionspoints out Mariette Sineau, because it is a single-member ballot”, with only one elected per constituency at the end of the first or second round. Unlike municipal and European elections, where voters vote not for a candidate and his deputy, but for a list of future elected officials. In the legislative elections, if women are not invested in constituencies considered “winnable” by their parties, few of them therefore have a chance of sitting on the benches of the National Assembly.
In 2022, have the main camps vying for the legislative elections invested their candidates in territories considered “takeable”? In order to find out, franceinfo looked at the 100 constituencies in which Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and the candidates of the allied parties within Nupes came out on top in the first round of the presidential election, achieved their best scores there, and where Together!, the RN and the Nupes have invested candidates for the legislative elections.
Although its nominations are not the most equal, Together! appears to be the coalition that has invested the most women: 51 in its 100 constituencies deemed the most “winnable”. The Nupes, on the other hand, certainly has more women than men on its lists, but has only invested 47 candidates out of the hundred most “takeable” constituencies. Finally, the RN has invested only 35 women for 65 men in its 100 most “winnable” territories.
“Already, during the 2017 legislative elections, the National Front had invested a large number of women in unfavorable constituencies”, recalls Mariette Sineau. Result: of the eight elected FN deputies, there were only two women: Marine Le Pen and Emmanuelle Ménard (who was not a member of the party, but only related).
This practice, widespread on the right as on the left, perpetuates the under-representation of women in the Assembly, deplores the communist deputy Elsa Faucillon in Mediapart: “As in other old parties, traditionally, it was men who were in place and that weighs until today, since in the Assembly, until then, we were nine male deputies and two female deputies.”
“The method of voting in the legislative elections is favorable to notables and incumbentsconfirms Mariette Sineau. For a long time there was a vicious circle for women who had a problem of local notoriety because of not being incumbents or local elected representatives in the constituency.“
The 2017 legislative elections, and their wave of “dégagisme”, marked a break. “The LREM tidal wave did not renew many outgoing deputies and helped propel more women to the National Assemblyrecalls Mariette Sineau. As LREM had no outgoing deputies, it was naturally easier to respect parity. The ballot thus saw a record number of women enter the Assembly, and LREM strongly contributed to the feminization of the Hemicycle, with 47% of female deputies elected in its group.
But are voters also responsible for the lack of gender parity in their national representation? According to Mariette Sineau, “no study shows that voters vote less for a woman because she is a woman.”