Analysis: What’s at stake for women in the French election

Gender equality has otherwise featured little in a campaign dominated by the war in Ukraine and the cost of living, but feminist organizations and academics are nonetheless working to highlight the major challenges women in the country face over the next five years, including femicide, gendered Islamophobia, pay inequality and precarious employment. In his five years in office, Macron’s government has racked up a number of policies that have made life easier for women, from making contraception free for under-25s to extending abortion term limits, boosting paternity leave and opening up fertility treatment to lesbian couples and single women for the first time. But French feminist organizations say gender equality causes still require serious structural change and major financing.

“Since 2017, 640 women have been killed by a current or former partner.”
According to volunteer organization Femicides by a Partner or Ex

A report from Oxfam France released last month put it this way: ‘”The law is reshaping most civil liberties by weakening them,” says Rim-Sarah Alouane, a legal scholar and researcher at the University Toulouse Capitole. “It affects a whole range of people, but the law was designed to frame and control Muslims. And the first victims will be Muslim women.”In a recent tweet, Macron’s projected opponent in the second round, the far-right Marine Le Pen, illustrated her proposal to write “the fight against communitarianism” into the French constitution with an image of a veiled woman with her face blurred out. Le Pen, who describes herself as a feminist, has worked to soften her image in recent years. “She has deliberately implemented a strategy of feminisation,” Chamboncel says, adding that the leader of the Rassemblement National has “normalized” her party and made a point of promoting more women in her campaign. Before the 2012 election, 19% of women said they would vote for the far-right according to the polling group Ifop; 10 years later that figure has increased to 34%.An analysis of the gender equality policies in the manifestos of all 12 presidential candidates by a team of postgraduate students at Sciences Po university described Le Pen’s program, which is light on gender equality measures, as “femonationalist”. In a “Letter to French Women” published on International Women’s Day, Le Pen pledged to deport immigrants who engaged in street harassment if she becomes France’s first female president.

“During the health crisis, we applauded all these essential jobs, which are 80-90% occupied by women. But we do not recognize their value.”
Economist Rachel Silvera

Amid rising inflation, Le Pen is campaigning hard on the cost of living. But she is one of the few candidates not to have proposed to increase the minimum wage, a policy that would have an outsized effect on women, who make up 59% of people employed on this wage. Macron’s economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, has pledged to increase the minimum wage by €25 a month from this summer. Left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has proposed a greater increase, of €131 per month. In a wide-ranging gender equality program, he has also promised to allocate the €1 billion demanded by feminist organizations to address domestic violence. Many of the women earning minimum wage make up the “essential workers” the country came to depend on during the pandemic in professions where the workforce is almost entirely female, such as home care, nursing and social work. “During the health crisis, we applauded and praised the merits of all these essential jobs, which are 80 to 90% occupied by women,” says economist Rachel Silvera from Paris-Nanterre University, who directs the Labour Market and Gender research group. “But we do not recognize their value.”Silvera points out that while women have been hit hard by Covid-19 over the past two years, France has so far escaped the mass dropouts from the workforce witnessed in other countries thanks to the extension of partial unemployment payments throughout the health crisis. But at 16%, France’s gender pay gap remains slightly above the EU average of 13%. For the next presidential term, Silvera says the best way to reduce economic inequality between men and women would be to raise wages in these heavily feminized professions. So far, Macron’s gender equality policies have mostly helped women “at the top of the pyramid,” she says. The World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 52 years to close the gender gap in Western Europe. This is more than ten times longer than the next president will have to make a dent in gender inequality. There may have to be several more “grand causes” to come before France achieves its founding ideal of égalité — equality.