Looks aren't everything of course but having them doesn't seem to have done French presidential candidate Segolene Royal any harm

Segolene Royal

In France, for the first time a woman has a strong chance of winning the country’s presidential elections, due to take place on April the 22d. Opinion polls put socialist candidate Ségolène Royal and her centre right rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, neck and neck. Surveys show that the French are prepared to elect a female president. This doesn’t mean that sexism is dead. Commentators say that the presence of a woman at the heart of the political debate of the campaign is changing the face of French politics. But critics, including feminists, say she is not doing women a favour.

Who is going to look after the kids? That’s the kind of sexist joke that Royal has had to put up with, during the socialist party’s internal campaign. She won a landslide victory in the end. A sign that such sexist comments, no longer pay in France. But when Royal’s approval ratings fell three weeks ago, she was confronted with a wide range of attacks, that feminists put in the sexist category. Her rivals and a number of journalists, suggested she was a lightweight politician who can’t keep her team together, in other words who is not fit for the job. Forcing Royal to remind people on national television, that the mechanisms of the presidency are no secret for her.

It’s true that politics are much more difficult for women. And yet, I really think the time has come for France to have a female president. I don’t think that any men with my experience would see their skills and their legitimacy questioned all the time. I have advised the late president François Mitterrand for seven years, I have prepared dozens of world summits for him.

Royal went on to explain that she has been elected member of parliament four times, that she has held three ministerial portfolios, and that she defeated a former Prime Minister in the regional elections three years ago…..all that while raising four children, with her partner, socialist secretary François Hollande. Her rival Nicolas Sarkozy knows that it’s difficult for a male politician to attack a woman. He has had to adapt and now lets his female colleagues be hard hitting. Member of Parliament Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet is one of them.

We didn’t have to be instructed to criticize Royal, Personally I am really upset to see Royal pretend she should not be attacked because she is a woman, she is the only woman in French politics that people are not allowed to attack, I don’t know why? There are not enough women in French politics but she will not solve the problem. There are very few women in her team, she acts as if electing her, choosing her would be enough for all the women of the country. One woman is not the solution, the solution is many women, many new women entering the political world.

Segolene Royal it the party rally

Yasmine Mohammedi firmly disagrees. She joined the socialist party less than a year ago. Yasmine says that the gender pay gap is huge in France, and that the country is far behind when it comes to equal representation. She believes that a Ségolène president can put an end to that.

In this country we are paralyzed by stereotypes, people don’t even realize that sometimes, and it takes a strong individual someone with strong willpower like Ségolène Royal to make things change, to impose herself in the first position, the top position in order to open doors for other women. As a symbol you can not think of any stronger one it’s the best, so she is fighting for women and she is fighting for herself it’s the same thing right now.

Despite a parity Law, only twelve per cent of members of parliament are women, so it takes courage to be a woman in a world largely dominated by grey haired men. But Royal is used to that. She was brought up strictly by a military officer, who believed that a woman ’s role was to support her husband. In interviews she often asks journalists :”would you have asked the same question to a male politician” when she is faced with a delicate or aggressive question. Royal often quotes feminists in her speeches, and she was the first serving minister to give birth. And as a media savvy politician she was quite pleased when photographers from glossy magazines took pictures of her and of her new born baby just days after she delivered. That’s why Pierre Rousselin, a senior editor with the conservative daily paper Figaro, says Ségolène is in no position to complain.

She plays a lot on the glamour effect, on the fact that she is a woman, so she has to expect the media not to forget that she is a woman, I mean she can’t have it both ways. Ségolène Royal as a female candidate and maybe Hillary Clinton in the United States does the same thing, has an appeal as a woman candidate I think it’s an appeal that touches a lot of people, there is a price to pay, which is the negative reaction that that same appeal has on other people.

The problem is that sometimes, Royal’s factual mistakes receive far more column inches that Sarkozy’s inaccurate statements. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Figaro is owned by a senator who belongs to Sarkozy’s camp, but that’s another story.

Royal is an innovative candidate in the sense that she has organised many American style town hall meetings during which she asked ordinary citizens, to talk about their daily problems. Sarkozy first mocked her initiative but now he too is organising meetings with “real people”. Suzie Rotjman is spokesperson for the national collective for women’s rights. She says Ségolène deserves a lot of credit because the daily problems of citizens are as important as geopolitical issues.

Because she is a woman, she is necessarily ignorant on international issues, that’s outrageous. Oh, and I also heard people say “She knows things that are of women’s interests only”. In fact Ségolène has a lot of merit, because she is trying to explain to people that issues such as domestic violence are genuine political issues! These are issues many French people are concerned with on a daily basis. Politicians shouldn’t focus only on the United Nations security council and nuclear submarines. How can we claim to be the country of human rights, if we don’t crack down on domestic violence!

Ironically the symbol of the French Republic is a woman: her name is Marianne. Today Marianne is just a face on postage stamp or a sculpture in France’s town halls. Candidates from across the political spectrum pledge they will give new life to Marianne. But who will do so? A man or a woman? The first round of the elections is on April the 22d. Paris.