As the municipal elections approach, the arrival of the vote of the joint list in the 25,000 municipalities in France of less than 1,000 inhabitants arouses both enthusiasm and skepticism, even if no elected official openly disputes the need to open municipalities to women.
“Ladies, do not hesitate to run for the first place, do not hesitate to become mayors!”, The president of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet launched on Friday in front of the rural mayors gathered in Futuroscope, near Poitiers.
A new rule that is not unanimous
Today, only 37.6% of the municipal councilors in the municipalities with less than 1,000 inhabitants, which represent 70% of the municipalities in France, are councilors.
Confined on the right and the extreme right, but validated in May by the Constitutional Council, the new law requires that small municipalities present lists of candidates that alternate women and men, instead of a vote with the fall of names without restriction of parity.
“As soon as we adopt a law on parity, save time to bring women to municipal councils,” said Yaël Braun-Pivet, evoking “a great impulse.”
Within the Association of Rural Mayors, which strongly supported the text, the new vote is largely a consensus.
“There are so many inhabitants in rurality, and parity is a matter of equality. Rural women should not be invisible,” says Cécile Gallien, centrist mayor of Vorey-Sur-Arzon (Haute-Loire).
“Who represents the parents of the students? Who takes care of the associations? Because it is the political world, women would no longer have competition when it is innate for men?”, Ironize Chantal Gantch, Mayor Dvg of Savignac-de-L’isle (Gironde).
According to constitutionalist Benjamin Morel, parity is “an anxiety issue” in many villages. According to him, the law comes to “add a degree of complexity” when it is already “more complicated” to participate in rural areas and compose a list. In question, the small number of inhabitants, the limitations of mobility and a heavier administrative load, to which a “feeling of illegitimacy” is added in women.
“Man can be a problem, no woman”
“In the municipalities of more than 1,000 inhabitants, it was very complicated at the beginning and finally, forcing a small destination, when looking for people, we managed to compose the first lists,” he admits.
At the beginning of September, a group of 2,000 rural mayors wrote to the senators to ask them to suspend the law, considered “disconnected from the realities of the rural world.”
Without disputing parity, elected officials denounce the stiffness of the lista system and the absence of “sufficient pool”, even predict a “tutoring” of municipalities due to lack of candidates.
“It is less likely that women take the passage of political commitment because it does not necessarily seem natural,” recognizes Fanny Lacroix, mayor of Châtel-en-Trièves (Isère), who sees it as the result of a “system dominated by men.”
He chose the mayor at age 28 in 1995, Nadine Kersaudy says she was treated for “child” and denounces an environmental machismo. “With my team, we had to succeed,” he recalls. He also reports that he was “verbally attacked” in 2023 by a mayor of his intercom for giving his opinion during a budget meeting.
“Man can be a problem, the woman does not,” Brocardarde Sébastien Gouttebel, mayor of Murol (Puy-de-Dôme), who makes him “find him to find men.”
The municipalities have already become parity
Optimistic for 2026, Auverne recalls that among the municipalities with more than 1,000 inhabitants that have crossed the limit in 2014, “none wishes to go back.”
“Gime, some say that they will be forced to tell men that they cannot represent themselves to give way to women, but it is a reasoning of the nineteenth century,” he moves away from Gilles Noël, chosen in the Nièvre.
Even so, with only 20% of women mayors, walk towards feminization promises to be long.
“The voting system cannot do everything. Even if there are as many women chosen as men, the distribution of powers in the municipal council and the intermunicipal authorities remains the benefit of men,” said Geographer Achille Warnant, author of a report on young women in rurality.
Source: BFM TV
