An easy concession or meaningful representation? Minority women in French politics

Abstract

Why have minority women in France made more strides than minority men in terms of gaining access to formal political power? Why have they become, in essence, the face of diversity in French politics at the elite national level? In this article, I propose that minority women’s rise to power has been anything but accidental and is the deliberate consequence of a system cognizant of the need to diversify politics, but institutionally and ideologically underprepared to do so. Because Republican assimilation obviates the formal recognition of minorities in the public sphere, politicians have strategically opted to include minority women in greater numbers than minority men on national electoral party lists and Cabinets in order to satisfy the de facto requirement of minority representation in the “safest” way possible. More specifically, I propose that politicians across the ideological spectrum often consider minority women ideal candidates specifically for their ability to serve a uniquely dual political purpose. On the one hand, minority women are visible enough to satisfy the basic need for minority descriptive representation. On the other hand, minority women are also deemed more “assimilable” than men and therefore not too “visible” to actively threaten Republican ideals or alienate conservative voters. Finally, if minority women are favored precisely because they promise not to dramatically rattle the status quo, this paper suggests that their increasing political presence will struggle to facilitate concomitant progress in the substantive representation of minorities in France.