In the 1990s, the book ‘Men are from Mars and women are from Venus’, by James Gray, enjoyed dazzling international success. Republished numerous times since, the bestseller ensures that “the Men and women do not speak the same language. The two sexes do not have the same way of expressing their feelings or of acting.
According to a study widely reported in the Anglo-Saxon and French media at the start of the year, men and women do not – or rather no longer – have the same way of voting. In the latter, Dr Alice Evans, lecturer at King’s College, London, and visiting scholar at Stanford, shares some disturbing observations. On all continents, an ideological gulf seems to have opened up between young men and young women. Where, in the 90s or 2000s, the ballot was almost identical between the two sexes, Korean, American and even German women now vote more to the left – men more to the right. China, Tunisia, and several African countries are following the same trend. However, France seems to go against these observations. In five years, according to the Ipsos institute, the National Rally has progressed by ten points in the female electorate, going from 20 to 30% between the European elections of 2019 and those of 2024. According to an Ifop exit poll At the polls, women are even slightly more likely (32%) to have voted for the far-right party list than men (31%).
Jordan Bardella was not mistaken: on June 17, he made a video addressing “all the women of France”. In the middle of the legislative campaign, the president of the National Rally promises to “guarantee equality between women and men”, “the freedom to dress as one wishes” and “the fundamental right to control one’s body” . The publication of this video is not innocent, while many feminist associations and women’s rights activists have expressed their concern about seeing the RN come to power. How can we explain, in this case, the party’s appeal to the French female electorate? L’Express interviewed Janine Mossuz-Lavau, research director at CNRS, specialist in electoral sociology and author of surveys on women and politics in France.
L’Express: How can we explain this increased presence of the female electorate in the votes of the National Rally?
Janine Mossuz-Lavau: Until recently, women voted significantly less for the National Rally than men. But for some time now, we have observed a reduction in the gaps, which almost approaches an equivalence between female and male votes, at least as far as the National Rally is concerned. How to explain it? Several factors come into play. First, there is a double “Marine effect”. In recent years, Marine Le Pen has worked to demonize the RN, by renouncing a certain vocabulary, by being less radical on certain themes, she has broadened her electorate. Then – and this second argument is more marked for the female electorate – Marine Le Pen has made much of the fact that she is “a woman like any other”: divorced, with children, autonomous, independent. This corresponds to a certain evolution of women in French society, the vast majority of whom are no longer at home. Who work, who divorce, who are also often single mothers. Accompanied by demonization, this profile put forward by Marine Le Pen reassured a certain number of women.
Furthermore, the RN vote is, as a whole, not an ideological vote. This is a vote of anger, resentment, even despair for some. This feeling is very present among the precarious population. However, women are often much more precarious than men. Most of the time, they have jobs and a more fragile place in the socio-professional hierarchy than men. That the reflex of “that’s enough” and “we’ve tried everything, except the RN”, is present in this female electorate is therefore not very surprising. There is another important element for future electoral dynamics: today in France we have more registered voters than registered voters. If the movement observed in the European elections is confirmed, and we see, even slightly, more women voting in favor of the RN, this will not be negligible.
You mention the case of Marine Le Pen. Do you think that Jordan Bardella can also mobilize this female electorate, as he tries to do in a recent video?
If we stick to the pure profile of the candidate, we can hypothesize that the “ideal son-in-law” side of Jordan Bardella may appeal, particularly among the older female electorate. But that would remain on the surface. Let’s look at the values activated by the RN. In surveys, we see that significantly more women than men say that they feel unsafe in public spaces. The difference with the feelings of men is of the order of ten points. Here again, it is therefore not surprising that parties – as is the case with the National Rally – which put forward promises of security find an echo in this electorate.
In your research, you highlighted that, upon obtaining the right to vote, women tended to vote more conservatively, more to the right, than men. So the RN vote is not surprising among them?
There were several movements. When women were given the right to vote in ’44 – and voted for the first time in ’45 – they voted significantly more to the right than men. This is what I called “the learning period” of the right to vote. This was explained by a much greater Catholic practice on the female side than on the male side. However, voting “on the right” went hand in hand with this religious practice. It was a conservative vote, without being extremist, contained by the values of Catholicism. For a long time, “extreme voting” was simply not seen as appropriate. But today, religious practice has declined, and so has the fear of extremes.
In the 1970s, we observed another development: women began to participate in elections as much as men, but continued to vote less on the left than them. It was only from 1986 that things became more balanced. From those years, and throughout the 1990s, they voted a little more socialist and green than male voters. Now, the pendulum has swung in the other direction: women vote for RN as much as men. Gender voting no longer exists.
Is France experiencing a movement different from that of other countries which, like the United States, are seeing the gap between female and male votes increasing?
It’s not just France! During the last European elections, we also observed this phenomenon in other European countries. I think we have to be careful and not apply an American point of view – and what may be happening in their own electorate – to our political life. Note that in the United States, the difference in voting between men and women has also been studied for a long time. In the 1980s, American researchers simply spoke of a “gender gap”. Now they go so far as to talk about “radical gender gap” (“radical gap between men and women”)!
Feminist associations and activists are alarmed by the danger for women’s rights that the RN can present. How can we explain that these arguments seem inaudible to certain voters?
First, let’s make an observation: even among women, some may be against abortion, and are in any case, apart from any programmatic question, not sensitive to these arguments. Then, the fact, as the RN was able to do, of refusing the deadline for extending the possibility of abortion for example [en 2022, Marine Le Pen a proposé de constitutionnaliser la loi Veil, tout en spécifiant le délai de quatorze semaines, NDLR], or to oppose PMA for all also corresponds to the convictions of voters. Conservative or reactionary women exist and we must stop thinking that the female electorate is progressive – or virtuous, it depends – by nature.
When I started working in the field of “women studies”, women politicians tended to justify their increased presence in assemblies, in responsibilities, because women were supposedly “more sensitive, more attentive” . But that’s simply not true. Look at Indira Gandhi in India, look at Golda Meir in Israel! We must abandon this reading grid. What dominates today is indifferentiation. There is no female or male gene that would determine a different vote for men or women. What can make a difference are simply historical and social factors. The fact that we still live in a society where, in daily life, in practice, women still have the majority of the mental burden of organizing the home, and are often more precarious. Once again, these are the elements that contribute mainly to the vote, not gender.
You mentioned the conservative movement, or perhaps the more “safe” movement of part of the female electorate. How can we explain the very low score among women on the Reconquête list, led by Marion Maréchal in the European elections?
Eric Zemmour, at the head of Reconquête, has always presented a masculinist discourse, criticizing the place of women. This type of speech is not heard today among a large part of the female electorate, even when they are on the right, or even very much on the right. There is also another, more minor fact to take into account: men are much more present in “small parties” – this is also the case on the far left – than women, for a reason that is difficult to understand. explain and which deserves to be studied more closely.
Do you think that this dynamic observed in the European elections between the female electorate and the RN can be confirmed in the legislative ?
There is a trend, but we must be careful, for several reasons. Unlike the European elections, where we vote for the same list at the national level, the legislative elections are as many votes as there are constituencies. Certainly, the voter travels for a party, but he also casts a ballot for the personality of his deputy. It is an election with more than 500 microclimates. In addition, participation promises to be much greater than in the Europeans. The presence of the New Popular Front, which brings together trends from the extreme left up to François Hollande, risks changing the behavior of the French. All we can say at present is that in recent years it has often been assured that the right-left divide is completely outdated. We have before us proof of the opposite! A recomposition may have taken place, but the voters are the product of a political and family history. Even if the parties change, they know whether they are right, center, or left. And this is valid for men as well as women.
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