Parity/Disparity: Electoral Gender Inequality on the Tightrope of Liberal Constitutional Traditions

Abstract

This piece examines Parity, France's requirement that political parties name women as half of all candidates for public office, both from a comparative and from a constitutional perspective. It engages the theoretical challenges of such quotas, both in terms of the essentialist/antiessentialist debates within feminist theory and in terms of the relationship of such group remedies to liberal constitutional law in France and the United States. The paper concludes that fluid provisions to remedy the gendered nature of political power would be consistent with current United States jurisprudence.

Keywords: gender, women, quotas, France

JEL Classification: K10