Parity and the Sexual Order

Abstract

Has the time for women arrived? This question appears between the lines of media, governmental, and even academic accounts of women who have reached the political sphere’s highest ranks. In fact, the recent elections of several women politicians were depicted as nothing less than a feminization both of the institution and practice of politics, as seen in the elections of Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as in the respective presidential campaigns of Ségolène Royal and Senator Hillary Clinton in 2007 and 2008. But the spectacularization of equal power-sharing between women and men is, at the very least, premature. Indeed, in October 2008, out of two hundred and thirty-one countries and territories, only seven chiefs of state are female, seven prime ministers and four governor generals (Mossuz-Lavau 2007).¹ These statistics stand in stark contrast to the recent spectacular depictions of women’s empowerment. Paradoxically, while women’s underrepresentation in politics exists as both a public policy issue and a subject of study, we are still far from resolving the more basic issue of women’s and men’s equal legitimacy to exercise power.