Published Papers by Eleonore Lepinard
French Politics, 2020
This article assesses the pre-adoption, adoption, implementation and impact of party parity penal... more This article assesses the pre-adoption, adoption, implementation and impact of party parity penalties established in 2002 to promote gender equality in the National Assembly. The analysis argues that while the penalties were implemented and increased over the years and had some success in enhancing women’s numerical representation, from 12.3% of all MPs in 2002 to 38.7% in 2017, rather than being “more than meets the eye,” the parity sanctions were actually far less. The limited scope and authority of the parity penalties and the gender-biased norms of key gatekeepers and political elites in the political parties and the high courts have circumscribed the extent of the progress in women’s numerical representation and the quality of that representation; women MPs in the National Assembly still remain marginalized in a variety of ways in comparison with their male counterparts. Thus, the outcome of the party parity sanctions, in GEPP terms, is “gender accommodation” over “transformation.”
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Law and Social Inquiry, 2020
Over the past three decades, the legal profession has experienced globalization, the rise of mega... more Over the past three decades, the legal profession has experienced globalization, the rise of mega-law firms, and intensified competition. These transformations have been associated with declining career perspectives, the hyper-specialization of legal work, and increased levels of stress. We argue that the concept of alienation offers valuable insights into these changes by providing an original analysis of the objective and subjective experiences of early career lawyers at work. We elaborate a multidimensional typology that covers the content and retributions of legal work. By categorizing experiences of alienation along these two axes, we identify four ideal-types of alienation: powerlessness, purposelessness, time deprivation, and unfairness. Based on qualitative studies carried out in France and Switzerland, we illustrate how young lawyers differentially experience each type of alienation, according to gender, status, and firm size. We conclude by suggesting how these factors combine to produce long-terms effects, such as the high female attrition rates observed in the Swiss and French legal professions.
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As a social movement strategy, intersectionality is used to foster the inclusion and representati... more As a social movement strategy, intersectionality is used to foster the inclusion and representation of minority groups. In this article, we examine how Québécois women's organizations use intersectionality as a tool to include immigrant and Native women. We argue that intersectionality can entail different practices with potentially conflicting goals. We conclude that social movement scholars would benefit from paying attention to intersectionality and to how it is practiced by activists and organizations. Indeed, a focus on intersectionality sheds light on the tensions inherent in the processes by which organizations construct collective identities, formulate political demands, manage internal conflicts and build alliances.
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Introduction to the mini-symposium
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Once a country allergic to any type of preferential treatment or quota measure for women,France h... more Once a country allergic to any type of preferential treatment or quota measure for women,France has become a country that applies gender quotas to regulate women’s presence and representation in politics, the business sector, public bodies, public administration, and even some civil society organizations. While research has concentrated on the adoption of electoral gender quotas in many countries and their international diffusion, few studies focus on explaining the successful diffusion of gender quotas from politics to other domains in the same country. This paper proposes to fill this gap by studying the particularly puzzling case of a country that at one point strongly opposed the adoption of gender quotas in politics, but, in less than a decade, transformed into one of the few countries applying gender quotas
across several policy domains. This paper argues that the legal entrenchment of the parity principle, the institutionalization of parity in several successive women’s policy agencies, and key players in these newly created agencies are mainly responsible for this unexpected development. The diffusion of gender quotas in France thus offers an illuminating example of under which conditions women’s policy agencies can act autonomously to diffuse and impose a new tool for gender equality.
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Intersectionality has been adopted as the preferred term to refer to and to analyze multiple axes... more Intersectionality has been adopted as the preferred term to refer to and to analyze multiple axes of oppression in feminist theory. However, less research examines if this term, and the political analyses it carries, has been adopted by women's rights organizations in various contexts and to what effect. drawing on interviews with activists working in a variety of women's rights organizations in France and Canada, i show that intersec-tionality is only one of the repertoires that a women's rights organization might use to analyze the social experience and the political interests of women situated at the intersection of several axes of domination. i propose a typology of four repertoires that activists use to reflect on intersectionality and inclusiveness. drawing on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the interview data, i show that hegemonic repertoires about racial or religious identity in one national context shape the way activists and organizations understand intersectionality and its challenges. The identity of organizations, as well as their main function (advocacy or providing service), also shape their understanding of intersectional issues.
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Analysis of intersectional debates in French feminist theory and politics
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Religion in general, and Islam in particular, has become one of the main focal points of policy-m... more Religion in general, and Islam in particular, has become one of the main focal points of policy-making and constitutional politics in many Western liberal states. This article proposes to examine the legal and political dynamics behind new regulations targeting individual religious practices of Muslims. Although one could presuppose that church– state relations or the understanding of secularism is the main factor accounting for either accommodation or prohibition of Muslim religious practices, I make the case that the policy frame used to conceptualize the integration of immigrants in each national context is a more significant influence on how a liberal state approaches the legal regulation of individual practices such as veiling. However, this influence must be assessed carefully since it may have different effects on the different institutional actors in charge of regulating religion, such as the Courts and the legislature. To assess these hypotheses I compare two countries, France and Canada, which are solid examples of two contrasting national policy frames for the integration of immigrants.
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T he now well-developed literature on gender quotas focuses mainly on two areas: the causal mecha... more T he now well-developed literature on gender quotas focuses mainly on two areas: the causal mechanisms that can be advanced to explain the adoption, diffusion, and effectiveness of political gender quotas worldwide
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Veils, niqabs, forced and arranged marriages, polygamy, and Sharia rules concerning women all hav... more Veils, niqabs, forced and arranged marriages, polygamy, and Sharia rules concerning women all have been the object of intense public scrutiny and legal regulations in many Western countries during the last decade. 1 With a particular intensity in Europe, the feminist concern about gender inequalities in minority cultures has become closely intertwined with national anxieties about the boundaries of the political community, its heterogeneity, and the necessity to integrate groups perceived as embodying different cultural and religious values. Critics of multiculturalism argue for restrictive regulations vis-` a-vis religious and ethnic minorities in the name of women's rights. Nationwide debates questioning the compatibility of Islam with Western culture and the prerequisites for the inclusion of Muslim citizens and migrants in the national body politic, have repeatedly focused on gendered symbols and gender relations. At a time when a return to a civic assimilationist concept of the nation is growing throughout Europe 2 (often implying a promotion of cultural homogeneity rather than diversity) the opposition of gender equality and minority cultures has immediate political currency and often has legal effects as well. Gender equality has suddenly gained a new visibility and status. In each country where these debates have emerged, gender equality is presented as a national achievement, a cultural specificity and a new norm, which determines who will be able to assimilate and what practices are or are not politically desirable. These public debates have also stirred up considerable theoretical discussion, especially among feminists, since the publication of Susan Moller Okin's important essay " Is Multicul-turalism Bad for Women? " in which she argued that granting specific rights to minorities is detrimental to women's individual rights because these rights generally favor a traditional, hence patriarchal, interpretation of a group's culture. 3 Many feminist scholars have criticized her essay, arguing among other things that the framing she proposed conflates culture and religion, de-historicizes cultural practices, obscures more pressing concerns about women's socioeconomic status, fuels processes of racialization and ethnicization of minority cultures , diverts attention from gender inequalities within the majority culture, and introduces relationships of power between women along racial lines. 4 However, the tension between women's rights and minorities' rights identified by Okin continues to generate theoretical discussions as it challenges the liberal account of multiculturalism, democratic theory, as well as feminist theory. Indeed, Okin's emphasis on the need to limit minorities' rights in order to protect women's rights has been criticized by liberal multiculturalists since it interferes with groups' right to sustain their culture, whereas liberal feminists have denounced multiculturalists' emphasis on minorities' rights at the expense of women's protection and their right to equality. 5 In this paper, I take a tentative step towards displacing this dilemma by proposing different theoretical and political perspectives, as well as proposing resolutions of these issues. Rather than focusing on the dilemma itself, I explore the definition of autonomy that informs both these theoretical discussions and the public debates that stem from concrete cases, and suggest that an exploration of what autonomy has meant for feminism and of how it can be
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Panorama des revues américaines sur le genre dans la section "revue des revues" des Cahiers du genre
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In Canada, women's rights organizations have successfully mobilized the law to foster gender equa... more In Canada, women's rights organizations have successfully mobilized the law to foster gender equality. In doing so, they have been constrained by legal understandings of equality and discrimination, which have shaped their strategies to seek justice. In return, their mobilization, mainly through litigation, has contributed to craft or to alter legal categories (such as " substantive equality, " " women, " " sexual harassment, " etc.), which in turn sustain their identities and their interests. However, claims made in the name of gender equality raise two issues: They tend to overlook the intersection of gender with other grounds of discrimination such as religion or race/ethnicity; and they tend to conflict with multiculturalism, a value enshrined in Canadian law. The recent decision taken by the province of Ontario to ban religious arbitration for family matters offers an illuminating case study of this tension between gender equality and religious rights in the Canadian context. This article analyzes women's rights activists' legal understandings of gender equality and religious/ethnic discrimination to explain how these representations have influenced women's mobilization against religious arbitration in Ontario. Bringing together the insights developed by critical legal studies about intersectionality and the study of legal mobilization, this articles explores through a concrete example the tension between feminism and multiculturalism.
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Le genre constitue désormais un des concepts couramment utilisés pour l’analyse des politiques pu... more Le genre constitue désormais un des concepts couramment utilisés pour l’analyse des politiques publiques. Cependant, la richesse croissante de ce corpus de recherches et la variété des approches mobilisées invitent à prendre un recul, historique et analytique, pour tenter de discerner d’éventuelles différences dans la façon dont le concept de genre est utilisé dans ces travaux, en France et ailleurs. L’introduction du concept de genre est venue depuis les années 1980 compliquer l’opposition princeps entre recherches « sur les femmes » et recherches féministes qui avait préalablement structuré ce champ de recherche. Toutefois, le concept de genre est susceptible de différentes définitions et joue dans ces travaux des rôles analytiques différents. Nous proposons donc un essai de typologie des différents usages du genre qui vise à souligner la nécessité d’expliciter le statut du genre dans l’analyse. Il ne s’agit pas de prôner une unique façon de procéder : rendre explicite le statut du genre dans l’analyse doit plutôt permettre d’assurer une cohérence entre la méthodologie employée et les prémisses théoriques.
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Parity appears as a critical moment in French feminism’s history, a moment in which old dilemmas ... more Parity appears as a critical moment in French feminism’s history, a moment in which old dilemmas have been enlivened, tensions have been heightened, and conflicts have arisen. It is therefore a moment worth exploring, for the subject of feminism itself has been called into question, and the answer parity has given is an ambiguous one. Trapped in the equality/difference dilemma, parity advocates have conceptualized gender difference in a way that does not allow thinking about multiple differences.
To explore the reasons, both historical and theoretical, that can account for such a turn of events in French feminism’s history, one needs first to look back to the history of second‐wave feminism in France to investigate how divergent understandings of gender difference have shaped the contemporary conceptualization of gender in parity politics. Indeed, I argue that the definition of women elaborated to legitimize the parity claim finds its roots in previous French feminist discourses and struggles around the concept women. Second, the context of the French Republican ideology has also imposed a strong constraint on parity claims. Parity activists have had to zigzag strategically between different meanings of difference and equality to make their claims compatible with the Republic’s core doctrines and therefore acceptable to power holders. In this perspective, parity also represents the last page to date in the conflictual history of encounter between French feminists and the Republic.
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This article provides an alternative approach to the arguments of "critical mass," whose tenets a... more This article provides an alternative approach to the arguments of "critical mass," whose tenets assume that policies fostering women's rights would arise from an increase in women's political representation. Instead, the article argues that the cultural repertoires that are used to justify women's higher numerical presence also matter. Indeed, different repertoires-such as claiming women's inclusion into politics in the name of women's interests or in the name of their difference-have different political outcomes. This case study of the French sex-parity laws, which ensures a 50-percent quota of women in politics, explores the connection between the rationales to legitimize the laws and their implementation at the local level. This provides for, first, an investigation of how the requirement to make the parity claim compatible with French cultural repertoires on citizenship and sovereignty has led parity advocates to define sexual difference as universal. Then, drawing on interviews with local politicians, it shows how this rationale underlining sexual difference has failed to define gender relationships as political and, thus, to promote gender equality in local public policies.
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Les lois sur la parité constituent un terrain privilégié pour analyser comment le droit produit d... more Les lois sur la parité constituent un terrain privilégié pour analyser comment le droit produit des normes sociales de genre. À partir de l’analyse des débats parlementaires et des conflits d’interprétation juridique sur la notion d’égalité des sexes, cet article explore les normes de genre sous-jacentes aux différentes expertises juridiques mobilisées par les parlementaires. Il montre comment ces différentes expertises s’appuient sur des représentations normatives du genre opposées et préconisent des traitements politiques de ces rapports sociaux radicalement différents puisqu’il s’agit, d’un côté, de légitimer et reproduire leur caractère inégalitaire et, de l’autre, au contraire, de les transformer. Il conclut en posant la question du rôle du droit dans la transformation des rapports sociaux et la conception du pouvoir qui en résulte.
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Si la question de la différence a historiquement été centrale au projet féministe, comme politiqu... more Si la question de la différence a historiquement été centrale au projet féministe, comme politique et comme théorie, elle est aujourd’hui insuffisante pour penser des rapports de genre qui apparaissent, à la lumière de la critique postcoloniale et des politiques de l’identité, traversés par d’autres rapports de pouvoir. Toutefois, cette critique semble avoir des difficultés à émerger en France où l’histoire du mouvement, en particulier la place qu’y a occupé la question de la lutte des classes, le lien qu’il a entretenu entre théorie et politique, et l’histoire du postcolonialisme — ou plutôt son absence — ont participé à tenir la question de l’articulation entre genre, « race » et ethnicité à l’écart des revendications et de la théorie féministe. Cette configuration historique, sociale et théorique a engendré un certain malaise dans le concept, c’est-à-dire une difficulté à critiquer les acquis théoriques du féminisme et à déconstruire la catégorie « femmes », autrement dit le sujet même du féminisme.
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Books by Eleonore Lepinard
Feminist Trouble. Insterctional politics in postsecular times, 2020
For more than two decades Islamic veils, niqabs, and burkinis have been the object of intense pub... more For more than two decades Islamic veils, niqabs, and burkinis have been the object of intense public scrutiny and legal regulations in many Western countries, especially in Europe, and feminists have been actively engaged on both sides of the debates: defending ardently strict prohibitions to ensure Muslim women’s emancipation, or, by contrast, promoting accommodation in the name of women’s religious agency and a more inclusive feminist movement. These recent developments have unfolded in a context of rising right-wing populism in Europe and have fueled “femonationalism,” that is, the instrumentalization of women’s rights for xenophobic agendas. This book explores this contemporary troubled context for feminism, its current divisions, and its future. It investigates how these changes have transformed contemporary feminist movements, intersectionality politics, and the feminist collective subject, and how feminists have been enrolled in the femonationalist project or, conversely, have resisted it in two contexts: France and Quebec. It provides new empirical data on contemporary feminist activists, as well as a critical normative argument about the subject and future of feminism. It makes a contribution to intersectionality theory by reflecting on the dynamics of convergence and difference between race and religion. At the normative level, the book provides an original addition to vivid debates in feminist political theory and philosophy on the subject of feminism. It argues that feminism is better understood not as centered around an identity—women— but around what it calls a feminist ethic of responsibility, which foregrounds a pragmatist moral approach to the feminist project.
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Intersectionality in Feminist and Queer Movements: Confronting Privileges, 2019
Elizabeth Evans and Eléonore Lépinard, University of Lausanne, Switzerland Series: Routledge Adva... more Elizabeth Evans and Eléonore Lépinard, University of Lausanne, Switzerland Series: Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality The volume sets out three key ways in which intersectionality operates within feminist and queer movements: it is used as a collective identity, as a strategy for forming coalitions, and as a repertoire for inclusivity. The case studies presented in this book then evaluate the extent to which some, or all, of these types of intersectional activism are used to confront manifestations of privilege. Drawing upon a wide range of cases from across time and space, this volume explores the difficulties with which activists often grapple when it comes to translating the desire for intersectionality into a praxis which confronts privilege.
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Published Papers by Eleonore Lepinard
across several policy domains. This paper argues that the legal entrenchment of the parity principle, the institutionalization of parity in several successive women’s policy agencies, and key players in these newly created agencies are mainly responsible for this unexpected development. The diffusion of gender quotas in France thus offers an illuminating example of under which conditions women’s policy agencies can act autonomously to diffuse and impose a new tool for gender equality.
To explore the reasons, both historical and theoretical, that can account for such a turn of events in French feminism’s history, one needs first to look back to the history of second‐wave feminism in France to investigate how divergent understandings of gender difference have shaped the contemporary conceptualization of gender in parity politics. Indeed, I argue that the definition of women elaborated to legitimize the parity claim finds its roots in previous French feminist discourses and struggles around the concept women. Second, the context of the French Republican ideology has also imposed a strong constraint on parity claims. Parity activists have had to zigzag strategically between different meanings of difference and equality to make their claims compatible with the Republic’s core doctrines and therefore acceptable to power holders. In this perspective, parity also represents the last page to date in the conflictual history of encounter between French feminists and the Republic.
Books by Eleonore Lepinard
across several policy domains. This paper argues that the legal entrenchment of the parity principle, the institutionalization of parity in several successive women’s policy agencies, and key players in these newly created agencies are mainly responsible for this unexpected development. The diffusion of gender quotas in France thus offers an illuminating example of under which conditions women’s policy agencies can act autonomously to diffuse and impose a new tool for gender equality.
To explore the reasons, both historical and theoretical, that can account for such a turn of events in French feminism’s history, one needs first to look back to the history of second‐wave feminism in France to investigate how divergent understandings of gender difference have shaped the contemporary conceptualization of gender in parity politics. Indeed, I argue that the definition of women elaborated to legitimize the parity claim finds its roots in previous French feminist discourses and struggles around the concept women. Second, the context of the French Republican ideology has also imposed a strong constraint on parity claims. Parity activists have had to zigzag strategically between different meanings of difference and equality to make their claims compatible with the Republic’s core doctrines and therefore acceptable to power holders. In this perspective, parity also represents the last page to date in the conflictual history of encounter between French feminists and the Republic.