There are a number of reasons for wanting parity as an outcome. We should first wish for equality despite the differences between the sexes, in the name of equality, because the man-woman inequality in representative posts or political administration is unjustifiable, it indicates a more generalised oppression that needs to be traced. We should also want parity because of the difference, since women, because of their socially engendered culture have things to say, recommendations that need to be put forward from a different point of view than that of men, recommendations that are even more complete and rich.

This position is implicit in the preceding one, there is nothing against it. The "feminism of difference" is a sub-unit of the "feminism of equality". I however know to what excess the opposition leads the argument between "universalism" and differentialism". Permit me here to expose how many of these debates are politically secondary in the face of this fundamental obstacle to parity: the masculine type of politician. A type to which I belong, even if I try to take care. This masculine resistance is much greater than the interiorisation by women of an "inaptitude for politics".

The man I call the masculine type of politician is one who makes politics his profession and passion, not for its content but for the pleasure of conquering, occupying and keeping an elected post. This type is quite common in humans of the male sex, because he, in a caricatural fashion, systematises "the role of a man". Firstly: to only have one thing to do in life, and to leave the administration to others (his companions). Then, to favour competition, i.e. the instrumental rationality organised for purely symbolic ends, which aims only to ratify excellence in the mastery of the instrument. And finally, in the competition, to aim for power only for itself, even if it is only symbolic.

Historical, social and cultural co-determinants can be found in this type and if he is found everywhere in the world, it is undoubtedly because it goes back to the most psychoanalytical roots of masculinity. If, as the psychoanalyst Gerard Mendel believes, the psychoanalysis of human beings in society is structured by a impulse of action-power, i.e. a desire to express his independence by changing the world and others around him, it is probable that the essence of the action-power is itself sexually driven. We could for instance draw from the intuition of Luce Irigaray: man will more likely have a tendency to express his impulse for action-power as a projection towards the exterior, instrumentalised towards a goal of phallic resonance. But this analytical interpretation is largely over-determined by the social organisation and in our countries, by the distinction between the "private" (the "domestic") and the "social" (outside of the home). The same local politician would not be able to conceive of a woman challenging his post as Councilor General, but would not hesitate to call his wife "the boss" at home. Not that she is really the boss there, but simply because he has delegated her so much that he would not be able to survive without her help and management. This masculine type of politician knows admirably well how to use both differentialism and universalism to justify his social monopoly.

The masculine political discourse

Without claiming to be exhaustive, we could try to briefly sort the ideological positions that justify the exclusion of women from the political scene. We will restrict ourselves here to the case of France since the consolidation of the Republic in the XIXth century. The variations of positions advance historically in response to the progress of female democratic aspirations.

Mystic differentialism

At the root of our phallocratic political History, there is of course the ideology of the Catholic Church, which, to date, has been able to maintain (questionable privilege) the formal, statutory exclusion of women from its hierarchical structure. The justification of this exclusion is theological, it is based on the "order of creation". The catholic hierarchy bases the monopoly of men on the positive side of femininity (in its eyes!): the capacity of women for exclusive devotion to individuals, to their children. The difference in women is the lack of universalism. Of course, priests, who mainly have to deal with women, had to offer them the concession that a woman was the "Mother of God". But only to confine them to this sublime role: "Be a mother and be quiet". This position obviously only survives in the right wing of Christian democracy.

Secular differentialism

The second position developed as a stand against clerical monarchy. It immediately led to the discourse of the masculine type of politician of the IIIrd Republic. He substituted the mystical Mother full of grace with the "wife-mistress of the home" or "just plain mistress". To the "Be a mother and be quiet", he added "Be beautiful and be quiet".

In this model of the IIIrd Republic, women are even excluded from the right to vote. Deep down, the woman is a "savage" being, a child who is too naive or a woman who is too perverse or, at best (after training), a female who is too attached to her little ones and her "home affairs" to deal with "public matters". There too, the difference in the woman is a lack of universality, whereas the difference in the man is his capacity to interest himself in the Universal and world affairs.

Abstract universalism

With the rise of women in public education and then with the access (in 1945) to the right to vote and eligibility of office, secular differentialism could not be maintained. It was the hour for abstract universalism: "We are all equal, we all have the same rights". Which until the seventies, amounted to Assemblies that were ominously saturated with men, governments that were almost exclusively male.

This was the case because the social structures that portrayed secular differentialism were by and large intact. Things would only change at the end of the sixties when women started to gain control over their pregnancies and acquired more economic independence.

But the "masculine type of politician" entirely structures the machinery that determines the electoral supply: the political parties. To triumph in the race for candidature, you should have "only that to do" (and women have a thousand other things to do), you have to "love it" (and women don’t necessarily like that kind of action-power), you have to like power for itself (and women would like to do something new).

It is in fact with the rise of feminism that, with the questions of the private domain becoming political, women entered as themselves, i.e. as their sex and not as citizens who were by chance female, into the arena of political representations, i.e. the arena where questions of social change became visible. They came there either to express their own demands (reproductive rights, professional equality), or to insist on the concretisation of an abstractly recognised equality. They came there in the name of differentialism or universalism. But, even when they came there in the name of universalism and equalitarianism, they came there as women, i.e. as special sub-units to whom the universal and the equal are in fact denied.

They always had this difference of not being equal, and the political solution to these problems, at least as an outcome, was parity.

Pseudo-solid Universalism or "fun" paritarism

The post-modern masculine response is particularly illustrated in the parties that have already formally accepted the objective of parity, firstly the Green parties and more recently the Leftist parties: "Of course women are needed, as are the youth, the African-immigrants, and the musicians! There are so many other legitimate differences in politics other than the difference of the sexes. And then, we have to find a place for an association, the representative of an allied party, an African-immigrant or a worker..."

Confronted with "fun paritarism", feminists should not content themselves with the pseudo-solid. If they really believe that at this present juncture of relations between the sexes, women’s interests and women’s point of view about the world should be represented on equal terms with men, then they cannot content themselves with parity as an outcome that is left to chance, dependent on the conviction of men. They should fight so that the parity of the sexes is written into the Law and the polling mode, at the same level as fair territorial representation and equitable representation of political streams. The alternate man-woman ballot list is not necessarily a guarantee, we have seen that. The election of one man and one woman by conscription, even if it creates an imbalance in the representation of political diversity, absolutely guarantees parity in the polling mode itself. It’s all a question of proportioning.

As for men, all that remains is to invite them to taste the pleasures of mixed Assemblies - if they are elected, and - if they are not - to invent other fields of application for their desire to change the world. I have no fear for them.

Alain Lipietz* (France)

* Member of the European Parliament, Economist, Research Director in the French Centre for Scientific Research
Député au Parlement Européen, Economiste, Directeur de recherche au CNRS

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