Stating Family Values and Women's Rights: Familialism and Feminism Within the French Republic
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Symposium: Article
Stating Family Values and Women’s Rights: Familialism and Feminism Within the French Republic Anne Revillard ISP Cachan, Ecole Normale Supe´rieure, 61 avenue du pre´sident Wilson, 94235, Cachan, Cedex, France. E-mail: [email protected]
Owing to demographic, economic and social reasons, the family has been a key element in the building of the French Republic. Familialism, here defined as the defense of the family as an institution, is therefore strongly institutionalized within the state. Even as it implied changing views on women’s labor-force participation over the years, this ideology has been an important source of gender-bias in French law and public policy. For this reason, it is likely to have influenced the women’s policy agencies (WPAs) that were created, starting in the 1960s, with the specific aim of promoting women’s rights and interests. In this paper, I explore the paradoxical assumption, according to which women’s policy, while being at odds with familialism, was also influenced by it, and I offer an explanation for this influence, by means of an analysis of the discursive and political opportunities faced by WPAs. French Politics (2007) 5, 210–228. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fp.8200124 Keywords: state feminism; women’s policy agencies; France; family policy; gender; familialism
Introduction While the French republican ideal is supposed to be grounded on individual, gender-neutral citizens, the legal framework and public policies around which the French Republic1,2 defined itself targeted not only individuals, but also families. Because of demographic, economic and social reasons, the family has been a key element in the building of the French Republic. This translated into a bifurcated political model in which ideals of equality and freedom were promoted in the public sphere, but familialism, an ideology grounded on the defense of the family as an institution, implying male dominance and gender differentiation (Commaille, 1993), was accepted as a ruling principle for the private sphere. Hence, familialism is a key vehicle of gender-bias in French law and public policy. Beyond its focus on family issues, familialism conveys a
Anne Revillard Stating Family Values and Women’s Rights
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conservative view of the whole social order, with the family as its basis, headed by a male breadwinner. Feminist movements3 have challenged this view of the social order since the beginning of the 20th century. Since the 1960s, this view has faced another type of challenge, one coming from within the state, with the development of women’s policy agencies (WPAs), that is, governmental bodies whose specific goal is promoting women’s rights and interests. This resulted in a conflict of values between feminism and familialism within the state apparatus, revealing the state as a site of struggle rather than as a monolithic entity (Mc Bride Stetson and Mazur, 1995, 6; Migdal, 2001, 3–22). Drawing on issue-framing literature (Ferree et al., 2002; Muller, 2004, 2005), I demonstrate herein how w
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