© Pascal Lafay/Editing, Paris
Women
can indeed breathe new life into politics and make it more accessible, more human
and non-violent as soon as they realise the power that comes from working together. |
Every victory feminists win is
a fragile one, says former cabinet minister Yvette Roudy. To defend their rights,
women have to be at the helm of a strong social movement
 The long march of women towards
an equal share of political, social and religious power is far from over, whatever
the country or system of government.
France has just passed a parity law to break down the resistance that has stymied
the advancement of women in politics for the past half-century. From now on, political
parties must run an equal number of women and men candidates in local elections and,
more broadly, in elections based on the proportional system, although the law is
flawed with regard to legislative contests. In any event, of course resorting to
legislation is an admission of those parties’ resounding failure to meet women’s
expectations, even though they are shared by the public at large. In the belief that
a seat for a woman means one less seat for a man, France’s highly conservative political
leadership does all it can to stop progress in its tracks.
I call these faint-hearted advances a “piecemeal” policy. Things look different and
machismo is less fierce, but at the end of the day there are still not enough women
to make their voices heard. We know from the Scandinavian experience that they need
to hold at least a third of the seats in parliament to form a critical mass.
Women look at politics in their own way. Much less attracted to the exhilarating
feeling that power can bring, they view it mainly as a way to change things. As mayor
of a town with 25,000 inhabitants, I tend to consider parks more important than parking
lots. Housing lay-out can set off lively discussions about how to design kitchens,
which for me are friendly places that should open up onto living rooms. I have noticed
that male politicians tend to talk much while we women are much better at organizing
our time.
I am tempted to say that women and men have different attitudes about how to organize
space and time. Our participation leads to the emergence of a certain, unknown reality
which escapes the focus of political action because it remains hidden in a corner.
It is there, but it cannot be seen. For example, is it normal for a woman’s career
to be penalised by a function—motherhood—that only she can fulfill?
The landscape of women’s rights is one of stark contrasts. In Western countries,
the march towards equality has achieved uneven results. In others, it is fraught
with alarming setbacks, the cruelest example being Afghanistan, where women are deprived
of the most basic rights. The women of Kosovo whom I met recently still lack access
to health programmes at a time when mother and child mortality rates there have reached
alarmingly high levels.
Major United Nations conferences from Mexico City to Beijing have helped women emerge
from the shadows. They need laws to defend their rights, and institutions to give
those laws teeth. Laws may be necessary sometimes, but they are not enough. They
must be accompanied by a social movement led by women. Nothing can ever be taken
for granted when women’s rights are concerned, and every victory feminists win is
a fragile one because feminism, though it fits the textbook definition of a movement
for social change, is not yet recognised as a political fact.
Everything depends on women’s will when their rights are won: the right to education,
work, control their bodies, move about freely, own property, and so on. And the women
who have come the furthest must not forget to stretch their hands out to those who
have been left by the wayside. In Algeria, women have succeeded in pushing back all
forms of fundamentalism.
Women can indeed breathe new life into politics and make it more accessible, more
human and non-violent as soon as they realise the power that comes from working together.
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