Parity Reform in France: Promises and Pitfalls

In the 1990s, a new social movement emerged in France to address the underrepresentation of women in elected bodies and to promote womens's and men's equal representation, in French called parité. On the eve of the twenty‐first century, the movement achieved its main goal—a constitutional reform. The purpose of this article is to present both the promises of the parity movement and the limits of the reform. During the 1990s, parity reform appeared as a tool to achieve sex‐based political equality, but it was also seen as an indicator of feminist movement renewal and of improving French democracy. The legal texts adopted in 1999 and 2000 did not keep the promises of the movement. While the legal obligations and financial incentives in the reforms established new mechanisms for achieving parity between the sexes in elected office, they have not yet translated into actual parity in electoral outcomes.