Réjane Sénac-Slawinski responds to the recent review of his work on parity, published in the life of ideas.
I sincerely thank Léa Sgier who, by her stimulating review, gives me the opportunity to continue the debate on the ambivalence of the concept of parity engaged in the “ What do I know ? »Eponymous.
How to assert on the one hand, that the joint claim renews the citizen problem by making the founding exclusion of women the revealing of the inability of the Republic to think different people in equality and on the other hand, that its electoral translation seals the persistence of the virility of the power ?
The polysemic and ancient term of parity has indeed been skillfully used to make a “ “Salto” of the stigma », France posing as a model of sharing political responsibilities after having been stigmatized as a exclusive, if not exclusive democracy. This feat is not only rhetorical insofar as the myth of French exemplarity continues, while it is in particular denied by the legislative and electoral translation of the joint requirement, or more precisely by its low application at the parliamentary level. Indeed, paradoxically, following the 2007 legislative elections, France is at 18e rank of the European Union and at 59e World rank with regard to the proportion of women in the lower chamber with 18.5% of women deputies, while before the vote of French laws known as parity of 1999, 2000 and 2007, following the 1997 legislative elections, France was 42e world rank with 10.9% of women deputies.
The expression of “ concept-method “Is very acuity to shed light on the ambivalences inherent in this” paradoxical parity Who maintains sulfurous and ambiguous relationships with taboos such as quotas, positive discrimination and feminism. By distinguishing the value of the tool of parity and the conceptual difficulty in founding it philosophically, the philosopher Geneviève Fraisses unwinds the complexity of this notion by affirming that it is based on the cohabitation of two registers. For her, the fact that parity is false in theory – the political cannot be based on the biological – does not prevent it from being true in the extent that, despite the limits of its electoral application, it contributed to disseminating feminist criticism by conquering equality by places of power. Because if parity is neither a luxury nor a gadget, but a project to renew democratic hope, it is because the exclusion of women from politics is the knot of their exclusion from power. It has indeed contributed to highlighting the original definition of citizenship as a right reserved for a class of equals ego. The notion of parity thus articulates the dimension conceptual from the joint principle to its implementation concrete by confronting the character at the same time description And substantive representation.
It is indeed in the gap between the joint principle and its legal and electoral application that consubstantial ambivalence lies in parity. The 1999 constitutional reform and the 2000 legislation “ are similar to anti -discriminatory measures, while the initiators of the movement for parity were aimed at a differently more ambitious goal “, That of” Release the political representation of symbols of the difference of sexes and thus fully include women in the figure of the universal ». The arguments of the joints are complex and they underline the difficulties of defining a republican universalism taking into account the differences without falling into the rhetoric of the complementarity of the sexes. The application of so -called parity laws illustrates it the temptation to justify the sharing of power between the sexes by the fact that women in politics would bring a plus in public action, in particular by being initiated by policies related to the care of the lowest (children, the elderly, sick), qualified as policies of care. By making parity no longer a democratic requirement but a political added value, the discourses on the virtues of women in politics comfort the asymmetry between the sexes. The controversies aroused in France by the candidacy of Ségolène Royal in the presidential election of 2007 and by the staging of her femininity as a political resource have illustrated this shift in the joint principle claiming the thought of differences in equality towards its legal and electoral translation embodying equality in difference, that is to say equality subject.
In addition, the encompassing of parity by diversity testifies to the association between feminization and opening of the political class to the “ civil society », To laymen. It is then understood as a response to the crisis of representation, which opens the way to a broader reflection on the homogeneity of the political body and the strategies to be implemented to remedy it without falling into the pitfall of mirror representation. Concretely, the fact that parity was an opportunity for political parties to charge the political cost of diversity to women illustrates the limits of ideological ambivalence justifying the use of positive discrimination measures for women, in the name of a different difference from the others. Thus, the debates on the political recognition of the diversity of groups and on the recognition of the duality of the human race are found, even if the first is more particularly worn by Anglo-Saxon works, while the second is essentially French. It is a question of taking up the challenge formulated by Anne Phillips: that of an overtaking of the opposition between a “ Ideas policy ” – designating the conception and discussion of public policies – and a” identity policy “Referring to the diversity of experiences” socially located ». There “ question of knowing ‘who is present becomes the problem of’ what is represented, problem going far beyond proportional representation ».
Thus, the dilemmas of the parity-quotas couple understand themselves in terms of the duality of the concept of parity. Understood as a “ Civilization concept “(To use an expression of Anne Le Gall.), She presents herself as an alternative to quotas by articulating her fidelity to a republican universalism released from its foundation” oligarchico-virile “With his denunciation of the interweaving of” legitimate orders – Sexual, natural, social, economic, political, family and intimate. Support for public action, it designates the laws that can be technically qualified as quotas of 50% candidacy, it thus derogates from the equal formal law to achieve equality in the facts called real equality.
Appropriation, even confiscation, by France of the term parity embodies both the denial of an inscription in an international standard and the demand for continuity in relation to the political heritage of “ Republican universalism ». In this perspective, far from invalidating the richness of the notion of parity or locking it up in a mythical mirage of exceptionality, the ambiguity of its links with quotas is at the heart of “ its quality “In the Aristotelian sense of what makes his” essential difference “(MetaphysicsBook Δ, chapter XIV).