Despite the weight of the feminist movement today, parties are still struggling to find female candidates. On the left, we are looking for solutions to break the glass ceiling.
As in business, positions of responsibility in political parties often remain occupied by men, more particularly in the former left-wing parties, the PS and the PCF. “We have a real subjectconfides to us a close friend of the communist leader Fabien Roussel, just see our group at the Assembly” : two-thirds are men, as on all the executives of the Socialist Party.
But internally, feminists are working to correct the situation and try to align the values of their parties with reality: according to our information, the PS will launch a “feminist transition commission” in the fall. It will be a question of going to the federations, to identify the talents among the militants, to train them, to teach them the workings of the political apparatus in order to manage to hoist them to key positions in the party, and to convince them to get started, to stand in the next municipal and legislative elections.
“Adapting the political world to women”
There is a form of self-censorship among these activists, as admitted by a communist executive, sometimes even an impostor syndrome. Hence the idea of these trainings that the PS will launch, which also include media training sessions, public speaking. “We must adapt the political world, created by man, to womenexplains a socialist. “There is everything to rebuild”, “for women to mass in the public space”.
The other obstacle to the investment of women in politics, especially when one wants to take on responsibilities, is the fact of having children. It’s retrograde but it’s still a reality. Recently, the Communist Party has been developing guard systems. The Ardèche federation, for example, finances babysitters on county council evenings. At the PS, for a few months now, a temporary daycare center has been used before each national council, the party parliament, to drop off your child for the time of the meeting. These initiatives certainly come late, but may help to obtain results during the next elections.