At 30, the ecologist Léonore Moncond'huy ended 42 years of socialist management in Poitiers. In Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, also a member of EELV, became head of the Strasbourg town hall. At 250 km from there, Anne Vignot, carried by a union list from the left, also took its marks in Besançon.
Find the results of the municipal elections
The municipal elections of 2020 were marked by a green wave, but also by the election of many women at the head of big cities. Since Sunday, half of the ten most populous municipalities in France have been headed by female mayors, including Paris and probably Marseille. A trend which is also spreading to smaller municipalities. In Aveyron, the inhabitants of Millau thus elected for the first time a woman, the socialist Emmanuelle Gazel, 42 years old.
If these mandates still remain mainly in the hands of men, feminization is gaining ground. Mérabha Benchikh, doctor of sociology and associate researcher at the CNRS DynamE Laboratory at the University of Strasbourg, author of Femmes politiques: "le tiers sexe"? , answered questions from 20 Minutes .
With the arrival of many women on Sunday evening, can we say that a new era is opening in politics?
I do not yet know the exact figures of the proportion of women elected mayors but what is certain is that a significant advance is underway, in particular thanks to the laws on parity and the evolution of mentalities to normalize - but not yet trivialized - the entry of women into politics. After the fact and for the record of these 2020 municipal elections, the data concerning gender equality will constitute objective indicators on qualitative parity and not only quantitative: namely the real sharing of power and representation in local executives with the statistics on the number of women mayors of municipalities, metropolises and even intermunicipal associations where, for the latter, few women were presidents. Another significant indicator in this analysis: that of the sustainability of the hierarchy and the gendered distribution of delegations in the municipalities, which had hitherto been at work. To see therefore if the same positions and delegations will be automatically allocated according to whether we are women and men on the basis of naturalized representations.
However in view of the first results on Sunday evening, women were able to win these elections in important cities like Nantes, Strasbourg, Besançon, Lille, Paris, Marseille [an uncertainty remains for the latter] - not necessarily for the first time elsewhere. Although more likely to be at the top of the lists for these municipal elections, women do not yet represent half of the first elected despite some symbols and strong images of this 2020 campaign that we were not necessarily used to seeing.
For the most part, these women did not make an argument about their gender. Is this also the change?
Not necessarily because in the past, many women had not campaigned on their identity as women - the opposite also existed for some women to borrow male attributes to make politics like his peers or even his models, politicians and gain acceptance in this macho environment in the war register. Apart from the "case" Ségolène Royal during the 2007 presidential election which had played a big role in her identity as a woman - a rare bird in the political field for this type of election at the highest level - a part of public opinion, of the media and especially competing male competitors in the political game, often conceal that certain men also, put forward and develop this masculine or even virile identity to win the elections. I mentioned Ségolène Royal in 2007 as I could have mentioned Nicolas Sarkozy through his habitus and his bodily hexis in the political game.
To return to these municipal elections of 2020, we note, firstly, that we regularly find two typical profiles of women in politics: those of advanced age, having one or no children, militant activists and very experienced in political exercise like Martine Aubry, Anne Hidalgo and Anne Vignot. On the other hand, the younger quadras, highly qualified and also having political experience as elected officials or even collaborators, which we tend to erase with, however, social determinants which deserve to be refined such as Johanna Rolland or Jeanne Barseghian . In addition, these women, newly or formerly elected, often tend to claim to be "feminist" in the first sense of the definition of the term: that is to say the equality advocated between women and men in all fields, political understood.
In the big cities, we see that it is mainly women on the left and environmentalists who take up these positions. Is there a difference between parties on the feminization of women candidates?
Clearly and for several years when the trend is that more left parties trust women. Certain ideals of equality would encourage us to match speeches and deeds even if the gap remains. In this sense, some parties like EELV clearly define themselves as a feminist party in their statutes with sometimes even a vigilance commission within them. However, we must not idealize either because the battle remains fierce in the political game both between activists and between elected officials, men or women, and therefore, the lust for certain positions, certain places, and functions remain in place where all blows are allowed even between comrades…
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