Another word on the state of parity in the new French parliament. Le Canard Enchainé makes a nice calculation that at the present rate of increase, given there were 33 female members in the first parliament after women got the vote (1945), and there are now 107, it will take 153 years to reach parity. In the meantime France has progressed from 86th place in the world parity tables to 58th, well ahead, Le Canard proclaims proudly, of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kirgizstan. However France is still behind Venezuela, but has just overtaken Nicaragua. The Canard then claims that the country with closest parity is Rwanda, with 48.8% of women, adding that luckily the examples of Sweden (47.3%) and Finland (42%) prove that genocide is not a pre-condition for parliamentary parity.

As far as the individual French parties are concerned, the results are not good for Nicolas Sarkozy. François Bayrou’s Modem party has 0 women out of 4 members; the Nouveau Centre has 0 out of 20 members; Sarkozy’s UMP has about one woman in eight (around 40 out of 323) and the socialists have one in four: 55 out of 205 members.

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