Déjà vu? Gendered membership of French parliamentary committees is a familiar story

The new French parliament has a record number of women deputies, with more than 26% women (compared to 18.5% prior to the election on 17 June 2012).  Has this new feminisation precipitated an end to the traditionally gendered composition of parliamentary committees?  Alas, the answer appears to be no.

Record number of women elected to French Parliament

  France has just elected a record number of women to its parliament.  The number of women deputies now stands at 155, or 26.9%.  This is a dramatic improvement from the previous record of 107, or 18.5%, women elected in 2007.  However, it is still a far cry from parity and is slightly below my original forecast.

Parity in the French parliament?

Will Sunday's elections result in parity in the French parliament?  See my discussion and forecasts of the outcome in my post on the LSE Europe blog: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2012/06/16/french-elections-parity/

Royal in the headlines again

  Ségolène Royal is back in the headlines.  The Socialist presidential candidate in 2007, Royal did not contest a parliamentary seat as it would have looked like she did not expect to win the presidency if she had a plan B lined up.  After losing to Nicolas Sarkozy, she focused her efforts on being president of her region and staging her comeback.

Voting à la française

I am in Paris for the first round of the legislative elections. A friend of mine was the returning officer for a local polling station and invited me to come along and observe the vote and the count. I'm glad I accepted; it was a fascinating experience.  While some aspects were very familiar, it seems that the French do things quite differently to the British.