JANE JENSON AND MARIETTE SINEAU
Family Policy and Women's
Citizenship in Mitterrand's
France
The relationship between an equal citizenship for women and
the social policy of welfare states has always been complicated. Are
women to be mothers for the nation or individuals with equal rights
and duties before the law and in practice? Will social policy facilitate
women's access to the two dimensions of the welfare state so central
to achieving autonomy: paid work and the capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household?1 Or will social policy reinforce women's dependency and unequal gender power? More generally, what
economic and political factors and conditions are likely to produce
choices among these alternatives that will generate an egalitarian citizenship?
The answers to these questions are not easy, either theoretically or
politically. Nonetheless, the last question displays a presumption in
favor of attention to political organization, action, and strategy. At the
same time, it suggests that social policy decisions cannot be considered
in isolation from other policy realms, such as macroeconomic policy,
any more than equality policy can be assessed in isolation from social
policy more generally. This article begins with these two assumptions
and explores the ways in which a particular policy realm, which initially appeared to have the potential to extend gender equality, has become one that actually creates new barriers to gender equality.
Social Politics
Fall 1995
O 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Women in Mitterrand's France •
245
We will examine family policy in France, focusing on the years between the election of Francois Mitterrand to the presidency in 1981
(as the candidate of the United Left and head of the Socialist Party) and
the stunning defeat of the Socialist Party in the legislative elections of
1993 (Mitterrand left office in 1995). Attention to family policy is
appropriate because it has been one of the pillars of the French welfare state since the 1930s. Moreover, in 1981 Mitterrand and his party clearly understood that choices made in the realm of family policy
would affect gender equality and women's social rights of citizenship.
Therefore, it is highly appropriate to ask why this promising beginning
led to a very disappointing end. After describing the history of family
policy in France and the complexity of the issues involved, we will
conclude with an analysis of the political and policy choices of Mitterrand and his party.
Modernizing Women's Citizenship
Since the mid-1960s Francois Mitterrand and then the Socialist Party, which he carefully nurtured to become a major party, have been committed to creating the conditions in which French women would finally
achieve modern citizenship rights (Jenson and Sineau 1995, chaps. 15). The goal was both to endow women with full individual rights as
republican citizens and to use the policy levers available to create equal
social rights of citizenship. Egalitarian feminists were actively committed to this project from 1965 on and played an important role in pushing Mitterrand and the Socialists toward more feminist stances.2
Family policy was a target precisely because of its importance in the
welfare state. By the mid-1960s, as Mitterrand began his long march
toward the presidency, improved family policy was seen, along with
labor and employment policy and new civil rights, as a way of achieving modern citizenship for women. Beginning in the late 1950s, older
conceptions of citizenship, in which women were defined in terms of
their maternal identity and in which family programs were the most
important expression of social solidarity (the so-called golden age of
French family policy), were already being challenged by those promoting what they called a more "modern" version of both family programs
and representations of women's citizenship (Laroque 1985; Commaille
1992). Its proponents sought to adapt family policy to new social mores
(rising rates of divorce, female labor force participation, service sector
employment, etc.) and to decisions in other policy realms (education,
employment policy, etc.). Legislation regulating the family moved in
the direction of gender equality before the law.3
Also at this time, French family policy acquired the task of "facilitating" women's dual roles as workers and mothers. For many impor-
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tant policy analysts, a modern French economy required higher rates
of labor force participation by women.4 Therefore, they proposed that
policies should facilitate women's "choices" to work or to stay at home.
Women should not be forced by economic circumstances or social pressure to do one or the other.
Such new thinking encoded in family policy a recognition that women's employment was both "irreversible" and central to modernity (Jenson 1987a, 545; Fagnani 1992). Indeed, for many of those designing
family policy, the concept of women's proper social role changed even
more, becoming the idea that "a free woman is no longer a woman at
home; she is a woman with a job." 5 In its leftist versions, well-designed
family policy could help undermine age-old ideas about the gender
division of labor and promote greater equality between women and
men, in the home as well as at work.
Francois Mitterrand and the Socialist Party were often in the forefront of this paradigm shift in family policy. Official party policy stances
and activities by individual Socialists within central agencies of the state
sought modernized family policy. Much was expected, therefore, from
President Mitterrand and the Socialist victory in 1981.
Despite this promise, during his two terms in office Mitterrand presided over reforms that placed less stress on achieving gender equality
within the family than previous policy positions and campaign rhetoric had led citizens to expect. Nor did he swerve from a natalist stance
that placed children at center stage while women became simply one
of those persons—a "parent"—in a "family" within which the child
lived. One result for women was that a family-based identity came again
to the fore. By 1993, the link between women's rights and circumstances
and family policy had become almost as invisible as it had been in the
golden age of family policy after 1945 (Jenson 1987b). In addition,
rather than family policy being designed to facilitate women's "reconciliation" of work and family, mothers' employment came to be seen
only in terms of its effect on children. This brought a substantial loss
of attention to women's autonomy, with negative effects on the potential for achieving the gender equality upon which a modern citizenship
depends.
This article first sets out three issues that have been at the center of
family policy in the postwar decades, then examines the record of the
Mitterrand years on them. Finally, it suggests the reasons the government moved away from efforts to use family policy to expand gender
equality toward attempts to solve the unemployment crisis by encouraging a form of work-sharing that included inducements for women
to return home or stay at home to care for their children. These initiatives were, in other words, more reminiscent of policies associated with
a traditional gender division of labor and a lack of concern to promote
Women in Mitterrand's France •
247
women's economic and social autonomy than they were a continuation of the attention to modernizing women's economic and social
rights—which Mitterrand, the Socialists, and other policymakers had
promised in the 1960s and 1970s. Such policies mark a new positioning on what Ann Orloff has called the state-market-family dimension
of social policy (1993, 312-14).
Three Cleavages in French Family Policy
In his platform for the 1981 presidential election, 110 propositions
pour la France, Francois Mitterrand promised four reforms under the
heading "The Family and the Child." They reflected the ideas about
family policy, and especially its potential for creating gender equality,
that had emerged among progressive forces in the previous two decades.
First, he proposed to create a paid parental leave that would allow
parents (half the time for the mother, half for the father) to take time
off from work to raise a child until the age of two, with full guarantees of a return to work at the end of the leave. Next, he promised to
start paying family allowances to parents with one child, rather than
only when they had two. Third, he asserted that employment equality
for women required many more child-care places in creches, proposing to create 300,000. Finally, he promised an Institute of Childhood
and the Family. With these four propositions, Mitterrand clearly positioned himself along the lines of cleavage of French family policy. The
stances he adopted in all three long-standing controversies were those
associated with the more progressive and feminist ideas. Nonetheless,
only his fourth proposition was enacted in the end. In particular, his
abandonment of the egalitarian position on the third issue and his
willingness to compromise with familialists on the first meant that socialist family policy never achieved its promise.
The first long-standing cleavage in French family policy is whether
to privilege a particular family form or to encourage a higher birthrate,
regardless of the type of family into which the child is born. The clearest division here is between familialists and natalists. For familialists,
the goal of family policy is to promote a particular type of family—
large, with a stay-at-home mother—capable of raising children with
"correct values" (Lenoir 1991, 161-62). Familialists, whose ideological base has always been in Catholicism and its supporting institutions,
seek programs that differentiate among families, "rewarding" only
certain kinds of family—those with two parents, consecrated by marriage. The classic program associated with the familialist position is the
allowance for families having a "single salary," but they have also supported tax legislation privileging families with only one wage earner.
Natalists, in contrast, focus on the birthrate and have been willing
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to promote programs for single parents, unmarried couples, and so on.
Natalists have little objection to women's work; indeed, they seek programs permitting the "reconciliation" of work and family responsibilities. As a result, when the influence of the familialists began to decline
in the Fifth Republic and "modernists" gained ground politically, programs could be redesigned so as to respond to the new data about
demography and family practices. Evidence had begun to emerge that
women's labor force participation might be linked to declining fertility, because of families' concerns that more children would reduce
mothers' ability to stay in the paid labor force. Given these statistics,
natalists proposed to provide some financial assistance to families with
two employed parents who needed help meeting the costs of child care.6
Natalism was predominant by the late 1970s. Familialists lost influence as the Christian Democratic Party disappeared in the 1960s and
the women's movement, especially its egalitarian wing, pushed for more
attention to women's employment and equality within the family as well
as the workplace {Jenson and Sineau 1994b). Nonetheless, if natalism
triumphed, it did not necessarily guarantee that programs would contribute to gender equality. Indeed, by the late 1970s, the government
of the Right faced rising rates of unemployment. Concern about unemployment fostered an effective alliance between makers of employment policy and family policymakers, who developed programs to
encourage three-child families and thereby move women out of the
active labor force. The policy of paying "the 10 million for the third
child" was the concretization of this goal. Policymakers knew that it
was only with the birth of a third child that women tended to withdraw from the labor force.
In 1981 Mitterrand parted company with his presidential opponent,
Valery Giscard d'Estaing, over the issue of the third child. While Mitterrand was always a committed natalist, he nevertheless rejected the
heavy-handed efforts to encourage third children and discourage women's labor force participation. In the election campaign, their differences
over the "10 million" were a symbol of the policy divergences between
the two candidates. Mitterrand was critical of the government and
refused to reason in traditional natalist terms about the symbolic importance of the third child. He claimed instead that the birthrate would
take care of itself after family allowances covered all children, more
funds were committed, housing allowances were improved, and services, especially for child care, were expanded. Even if Mitterrand and
Giscard shared a natalist strategy, their differing interpretations of how
to raise the birthrate had the potential for dramatically different consequences for women's autonomy. As we will see, however, strategies
for combatting unemployment, macroeconomic decisions about state
spending, and philosophical principles of neoliberalism to which Mit-
Women in Mitterrand's France •
249
terrand and the Socialist governments committed themselves after 1983
eventually made Mitterrand's natalism almost indistinguishable from
that of his right-wing opponent.
The second line of cleavage in French family policy involves divergent ideas about the economic purposes of family policy, particularly
the intended form of income redistribution. For familialists, who dominated the creation of family policy after 1945, the goal was to distribute
wealth horizontally, from those with no or few children to those with
many. Thus, family policy had its own rhythmn, responding to both
fertility rates and the needs of French children. This view of family
policy was contested from the beginning by those (particularly on the
Left and others concerned with modernizing the French economy after the war) who claimed that family payments were only one of several tools available to the state to organize vertical redistribution and
to reduce poverty and social exclusion, as well as to realize the social
rights of citizenship. For these modernists, family policy should be
Keynesian, responding to the standard economic indicators of unemployment, inflation, and so on.
By the late 1960s, the balance of power on this issue had clearly tilted
in favor of those who wished to incorporate family policy into the realm
of social policy in general. As Keynesians' influence became more widespread within the major state institutions, especially the Plan, family
policy was linked to economic policy and social spending, responding
more directly to poverty rates than to the birthrate. Programs increasingly became income-contingent rather than triggered by the number
of children. In addition, more programs were unhinged from labor force
participation, which had been their historical provenance, becoming
universal rather than requiring that the parent have paid employment
(Messu 1992, 97-98). In the 1970s, this shift brought two types of
transformation: (1) the development of programs for families with
special needs (disabled children, single parent, young households) and
(2) a policy focus on the most needy families. While the former was in
the tradition of multiple programs to achieve a variety of purposes, the
latter marked a more distinct break with tradition. Family policy had
become a part of the fight against poverty, exclusion, and misery, as
well as something other than a recognition of the contribution that
childbearing and rearing made to the French nation.7
As in the case of the first cleavage, a progressive choice depended
on the willingness of the state to take responsibility for achieving a
particular outcome, in this case promoting income redistribution from
the rich to the poor. As Socialist economic policy became more neoliberal through the 1980s and "private" rather than "public" initiatives
gained favor, the tax system and inducements to seek child care in the
market moved family policy away from this redistributive goal.
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The third cleavage that marked French family policy for many years
reflects divisions about responsibilities, that is, the gender division of
labor within the family. Again, familialists' clear position is that a
mother's responsibility is to stay at home to raise children while a father's task is to support the family, albeit with the help of other citizens and the state via family benefits. Indeed, the familialists' inability
to adapt to rising levels of female employment and to its centrality to
the modern French economy in the 1960s contributed to the displacement of familialist discourse from the center of policy making. The
other, more egalitarian position seeks to use family policy to generate
not only women's equality in the paid labor force but also greater equality at home. Thus, all of the measures to weaken paternal power and
to diminish the privileges of the "legitimate" child, which began in the
mid-1960s, were designed to give women the civil rights of citizenship
that they still lacked and to rebalance the family in the direction of
gender equality and equality among siblings.
As a modernizer, Mitterrand had always supported, indeed advocated, the equalization of family law. But more than that, by the 1970s
he and the Socialist Party (Parti Socialists [PS]), had been pushed by
the women's movement to see the traditional family as a site of domination and its democratization as crucial to the achievement of social
justice. According to the Socialists' program, social transformation
required greater democracy, and the family was one of the places with
which to start (PS 1979, 132).
These three long-standing cleavages organized debates about French
family policy after 1945. The divisions did not disappear after 1981.
They were too deeply embedded in state institutions as well as political discourse for the election of a new president and new party to banish them. Most important for our story is not their existence but the
fact that institutional, political, and economic factors all contributed
in the fourteen years of the Mitterrand presidency to a realignment of
actors along the three dimensions. The balance of forces was reweighted
to favor familialists again, to downplay vertical redistribution, and to
reinforce representations of the traditional gender division of labor.
Institutionally, the decision in the first months after Mitterrand's election to locate "women" and "the family" in separate places in the
state—one in the Ministry of Woman's Rights headed by the feminist
Yvette Roudy and the other in a Secretary of State for the Family—
meant that institutional surveillance of family policy by state feminists
was minimized. Therefore, policy impacts on the citizenship rights of
the women who were mothers were easily ignored.
Economic crises and the dramatic failure of the initial economic
program unleashed those who wished to retreat from state spending
as well as touched off a desperate search for solutions to the unemploy-
Women in Mitterrand's France •
251
ment problems. All of this could happen because of the shifting balance of political forces. By 1981 feminists were feuding and the movement was in steep decline. Moreover, unions and parties of the Left were
in disarray (Jenson and Sineau 1995, 180). In addition, there was a
revival of the Right and its natalists. The result was that the President
and the government became substantially freer to make unhindered
decisions than Mitterrand had been as a candidate before 1981. At the
same time, the political circumstances of the rise of the extreme Right
meant that he and the Socialists were less inclined to fend off familialist formulae. The net result was that no longer would efforts be made
to combine natalism with social programs designed to aid French
mothers in overcoming the barriers to equal citizenship or to use family policy to promote democracy and gender equality.
From Egalitarian Natalism to Natalism for France
In the 1981 election campaign, the Right government's natalist positions and efforts to reduce unemployment statistics, symbolized by
the promise of "10 million for the third child," provoked a furious
reaction from the Left in general and from women in particular against
what they termed the triumph of reactionary natalism and even familialism. In contrast, the Socialists promised to be scrupulously neutral
about the form of family supported and to banish crude natalism.
Nonetheless, neither Mitterrand nor the PS ignored demography. The
Socialists' program, Pour la France des annees 1980, for example,
declared in 1980 that France faced a serious demographic problem and
called for initiatives that would allow parents not only to choose not
to have children (that is, for improved information about and access
to contraception) but also the means to choose to have children. With
respect to childbearing, the program declared that "demography is not
simply a private matter" (PS 1980, 309).
As for candidate Mitterrand, his ideas were clearly evident in his
book published just before the election, let et maintenant (Here and
now). In presenting his proposals for family policy and addressing his
natalism, Mitterrand started with the statement from the Socialists'
program that "all our children should be wanted children; we should
have all the children we want." 8 While access to contraception and
abortion was clearly the recipe for the first goal, only a new approach
to family policy could achieve the second. Thus, more places in creches were promised under the "family policy" heading (not "equal
rights") because, along with other modernizers since the 1950s, Mitterrand understood very well that the lack of available child care was
likely to discourage parents from having more children. The 300,000
new spaces were designed to overcome this demographic impasse.
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Therefore, Mitterrand's—and the Socialists'—originality in 1981
was not in that they were nonnatalist but in the ways they understood
the problems of demography, in light of gender equality, and therefore
the solutions proposed. In his first major speech on the subject, the
President was faithful to his earlier positions, stressing both the importance of women's work for the family and the fact that no single model would be imposed. The choice to work or stay home must be a real
one: "Everyone must choose. But it is a national responsibility to guarantee the conditions for making a choice."9 Even when presenting the
Medal of the French Family (Medaille de la Famille Franchise) to mothers of large families in June 1982, Mitterrand began by stating that his
presentation of the medal did not imply a preferred type of family. He
again emphasized the importance of choice.10
This position was not familialist.11 It focused more on children than
on family forms, both in discourse and in proposed reforms. The position with which Mitterrand and the PS came to power has been described as the "double no": there would be no interference in families'
affairs, in order to induce—or force, in the case of unwanted pregnancies—them to have children; neither would there be indifference to the
real needs of families for monetary transfers and collective services
(Messu 1992, 102). The decision to have a child was viewed as a consequence of the availability of facilitating circumstances: secure employment, social services (e.g., child care and housing), higher family allowances for all children, a reformed tax system, paid parental leaves, and
extended maternity leaves (again for all births). Moreover, the focus
was explicitly on the child.. . and all children. Therefore, the longstanding distinctions in French family policy penalizing firstborn children would be eliminated.
In all of this we see that family policy was important to Francois
Mitterrand. As soon as he had settled on the appointment of Yvette
Roudy to head the promised new Ministry of Woman's Rights, he
turned immediately—"women" always being closely followed by the
"family" in his political thought—to the search for a Secretary of State
for the Family.12 He called on a close adviser, Veronique Neiertz: "Find
me a woman from the provinces with children."13 She came up with
Georgina Dufoix, the mother of four children, who was a virtual political unknown at the time. Appointed first only as a Secretary of State
for the Family, her political star rose even as Yvette Roudy's fell. As
Roudy was demoted from the Cabinet in 1983, Georgina Dufoix was
promoted, becoming Minister of Social Affairs and National Solidarity in Laurent Fabius's government, as well as spokesperson for the
government.
According to some observers, the appointment of Dufoix at the same
time as Roudy in 1981 was meant to send a clear signal that, impor-
Women in Mitterrand's France
•
253
tant as the pursuit of gender equality might be, the family would never be neglected.M This message, familiar from Mitterrand's long-standing philosophical rapprochement of women's equality and the family,
began to take on something of a new allure in the important speech he
made on March 8, 1982. If Roudy rarely spoke of the family, thereby
refusing to constantly link women and families, Mitterrand had no such
compunction. He responded positively to the request from the Secretary of State for the Family that he not neglect her domain during the
first official celebration of International Women's Day.15
Evoking again the long familiar discourse of choice, the President
had begun to place more emphasis on the idea of the difficulties for
some women of having children or of being able to choose to provide their children's care themselves—by leaving the labor force or
by working part-time, for example. Women might be prevented from
choosing, might face a situation of little freedom of choice, because
of economic circumstances.16 A similar concern with the consequences
of lack of choice organized his response to reform proposals coming
from Dufoix. In April 1982 when she was presenting her preliminary
proposals for reforming family policy to the Cabinet, the President
spoke out at length, as described by his chronicler, Jacques Attali: "He
praised large families and expressed his hope for a rise in the birthrate: 'We will not prohibit contraception. It's to be expected, it's freedom, but it is only negative. . . . The liberation of a woman often
means having children.'" 17
These presidential declarations accurately capture the tension between two discourses. Mitterrand's decision to divide responsibilities
within the government both perpetuated and perhaps aggravated this
tension. The first discourse was, of course, about women's rights and
equality. This was the terrain of Roudy's Ministry, and it focused on
work, gender equality, and changing the family division of labor, and
in many ways marked a break with the past. But the Ministry's reach
did not extend to the family. The discourse of choice and the development of a new family program were assigned to Dufoix as Secretary
of State for the Family—and later to Dufoix as Minister of Social Affairs. Here the language was much more familiar, calling on parents to
reconcile their responsibilities at work and at home, as well as asking
that family policy guarantee parents a real choice. This discourse did
not admit directly the fact that the parent with primary responsibility
for child care was much more likely to be a woman, whether in a single or two-parent family. In other words, the constant use of the term
"parent" rendered invisible the gender division of labor in the family.
The bifurcation of governmental responsibilities was one of the factors that allowed the family to be separated from women, to become an
entity in itself, obscuring the situation of the individuals within it. The
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projects for achieving gender equality proceeded without a great deal of
attention to their articulation with the policies being—simultaneously—
developed elsewhere for family policy. In the same way, programs for the
family could be elaborated without explicitly taking into account any
implications for gender equality. One indicator of the separation was that
Yvette Roudy was not present at or mentioned during the major speeches
that Mitterrand devoted to the family, although other ministers, often
high-ranking ones and always Dufoix, were part of the entourage or
referred to by name during the speeches.18
Another part of the story is the way the President's discourse itself
began to uncouple gender from natalism. The needs of France were
becoming more important in his public pronouncements. In December 1983, for example, his speech echoed General Charles de Gaulle's
position in 1945.19 While insisting that the decision to have children
was a private one made by parents, Mitterrand nonetheless emphasized
that France needed children and, more particularly, that France needed two or three children per family.20 Increasingly, children and youth
were described as the vitality of the nation, while the development of
France on all fronts depended upon a large population. Indeed, he argued that success was a consequence of numbers; large generations were
more creative.21 One important consequence of Mitterrand's thinking
was that he intervened directly in the elaboration of the DCth Plan to
ensure that one of its priorities would be to ensure "an environment
favorable for the family and the birthrate." Again, in his 1988 campaign manifesto, Lettre a tons les Frangais, family policy per se received
only passing mention in a section on the crisis of social security. The
social justice theme was downplayed and gender equality was absent
all together. However, youth and the demographic future had a central place in the discussion of the future and French culture.
With this shift in discourse, women had either become almost invisible, as they were in the Lettre, or their decision about childbearing
dominated his thinking. Thus, in an interview for Elle magazine before the 1988 election, Mitterrand spoke again of the inequities and
difficulties that women face, but this time the problem was that they
had to work too hard to "reconcile work and family." As a result, the
"right to choose" had tilted decidedly in the direction of stay-at-home
mothers, at which point he identified the increases in family benefits
after 1981 and paid parental leaves as his major contribution to ameliorating women's burdens. Gender equality was simply disposed of
parenthetically ("Mitterrand" 1988).
By his second term, the idea of using family policy to encourage a
new gender division of labor had virtually disappeared from Mitterrand's discourse about families and from the family policy implemented by the Left governments. This shift had major negative consequences
Women in Mitterrand's France •
255
for women's equality, opening space for a return to a representation
of women primarily in terms of their family roles, with preference going to those who were mothers of large families. But the problem was
not simply that the President might be altering his discourse and policy preferences, with his natalism becoming less egalitarian. Expenditures on family programs also quickly ran up against that second longstanding cleavage in family policy, in other words, its articulation with
spending on social protection. As in all policy domains, family policy
had to cope with the economic conditions of the 1980s—and here, too,
major adjustments occurred.
Family Policy in the Context of Rigueur and Neoliberalism
Since 1945 French family policy has been expensive, but expenditures declined relative to other social spending sectors throughout the
1970s, and families had lost purchasing power. Therefore, after 1981
most of the initial activity in the area of family policy was not orchestrated by the Secretary of State for the Family but came instead from
decisions about macroeconomic policy. The first budgets of the Left
government provided dramatic evidence of its commitment to using
family policy to redistribute income vertically.
The initial Keynesianism of Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy's government brought a huge infusion of spending on family allowances and
housing. In 1981-82, family and housing allowances rose by 50 percent.22 One result was that family benefits increased in importance,
relative to other forms of social spending (DF 1993). In a reversal of
the previous government's practice, a second aspect of the Left government's initiative was that it favored families with two children.23 Tax
legislation was also redesigned to set a limit on the benefits from tax
deductions going to well-off large families. In its first two years the
government demonstrated not only a commitment to Keynesian redistribution but also a lack of enthusiasm for the type of natalist and even
familialist programs that had characterized the later Giscard years
(Messu 1992, 103-7).
This commitment to Keynesian-style spending was short-lived, however, just as it was in other policy domains (e.g., Hall 1987; Ross and
Jenson 1988). The imposition of the economic policy of rigueur in
1983, including the wage and price freezes of June 1982, brought more
than an end to new spending. It also generated efforts to solve the fiscal
crisis of the Social Security system, with 30 percent of the cuts coming
from family programs. This programmatic shift brought a return to
traditional orientations and especially the focus on large families, in
the context of the shift to austerity and dramatic efforts to address the
Social Security deficit (Brin 1991, 58-59).
256 • Jenson and Sineau
This policy realignment, involving both an end to Keynesianism and
its replacement by a version of left-wing neoliberalism, reduced the
space for women to achieve equality and modern citizenship. The abandonment of Keynesianism meant more than simply less effort to redistribute vertically. It also implied that the principles of social spending
would themselves change. For family policy, this meant it was liberated somewhat from the emphasis on vertical solidarity, which was itself disappearing. It thereby became easier to return to traditional orientations about horizontal redistribution as well as to redesign
programs to make them fit into the neoliberal framework, for example, by reducing the direct involvement of the state and relying on more
individualized forms of benefits.
To the extent that, as Mitterrand said in 1981, women's labor force
equality depends on adequate child-care facilities and reductions in
spending are likely to have an impact on the development of new childcare places, equality was threatened. The President started to emphasize the high costs of creches and the limited circumstances of the state
budget (Mitterrand 1984). Not unexpectedly, the promised 300,000
places never materialized.24 In 1993, of the 750,000 children under
three who needed child care, only 321,000 were cared for in a creche
(160,000) or by a licensed childminder (assistantes tnaternelles) (Hirsch 1993, 115). This gap between need and supply has become yet
another structural factor pushing women toward part-time and atypical work, thereby providing another limit to their equality in the labor force.25
With the arrival of the Socialists' neoliberalism, the legacy of an
assimilation of family policy to social and economic policy had other
effects more generally. For example, as part of the move toward "less
state" as well as the efforts to cut state expenditures, create employment, and reduce black-market work, child-care programs were revised.
A first step in the direction of "diversification" of child care was taken
in 1986. This was part of the Right's reform of family legislation undertaken during the period of cohabitation (1986—88), when a Socialist President "cohabited" with a right-wing government and Prime
Minister. It created a benefit, proportional to the real cost, for child care
provided at home. In a move designed to relieve some of the pressure
on collective forms of child care, the Socialists back in power then
moved to regularize the employment situation of childminders working for individual families, thereby making such work more attractive.
The employment benefits of private childminders were improved by
raising the levels of Social Security payments required of their employers. At the same time in 1988, with later revisions, the procedures and
costs of hiring a childminder were simplified, so that more families with
limited resources would be encouraged to employ them (Herzlich 1989;
Women in Mitterrand's France •
257
Liaisons Sociales-Bref social 1992). These initiatives continued through
the final years of the Socialist governments, as part of efforts by the
Minister of Labor to regularize child care, elder care, and other forms
of service delivery in the home. In the general atmosphere of neoliberalism, reduced spending, and decentralization, the provision of services that Mitterrand had described in 1981 as the solution to the problems of natalism and as central to family policy were no longer the
privileged instrument.
In this context of neoliberalism, the major reform of family policy
in the Mitterrand years was instituted. In 1984 Georgina Dufoix, Minister of Social Affairs and National Solidarity in the Fabius government,
elaborated a draft bill that set out "measures favoring young families
and large families." A central component of the law, which came into
effect in January 1985, was a benefit paid for young children {allocation au jeune enfant [AJE], which became the allocation pour jeune
enfant [APJE] in 1986). It provided a very substantial universal benefit from the confirmation of pregnancy (the fourth month) until the child
reached three months. At that point, the allowance became incomedependent and was paid until the child's third birthday.
Ostensibly, the AJE was an expression of the Socialists' commitment
to reducing the ostracization of the first child. It was also an expression of the logic of "the rights of the child" because every child received
this support without regard to birth order. Therefore, the AJE provoked
little controversy among Socialists. The measure seemed a faithful translation of long-standing commitments to equality among children.
Nonetheless, even the AJE was a program very much shaped by the
new commitment to rigueur. It was as much designed to simplify the
system and save administrative costs as it was to extend benefits. Indeed, the money had to be "found" by cutting or redesigning other
programs. Overall, there would be little additional financial benefit to
many families, who would continue to receive almost exactly the same
amount that they previously had from the prenatal, postnatal, and other
programs being amalgamated into the AJE, albeit under less cumbersome circumstances. There was one group, however, that would receive
substantial gains from the AJE: families who had their children close
together and who might therefore be expected to have more than two
children.26 This aspect of the AJE demonstrates the extent to which
demographic concerns had come to dominate policy making in 1984.
When the Cabinet discussed the draft law, Francois Mitterrand
spoke in dramatic terms about how instituting this program was a
"matter of survival" (Herzlich 1989). The bill, as its name announced,
both favored young families and large families (three or more children) and addressed the question of demographic renewal. It was, in
other words, a program that was no longer completely neutral about
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demography. These programs explicitly sought to "give families the
means to choose and achieve their family goals and in particular to
have several children." 27
This shift toward demographic activism also motivated Mitterrand's
mounting desire to institute a paid parental leave. Thus, the second
component of Dufoix's draft bill generated a huge controversy, because,
in contrast to the AJE, it explicitly pushed family policy toward positions on the third long-standing family policy cleavage of which the
Socialist Party and many elected Socialists did not approve. The goal
of promoting equality and democracy in the family was threatened by
a program designed to be, in effect, a "mother's salary."
Equality within the Family?
In his 110 propositions Mitterrand stated his commitment to gender equality. Moreover, he and the Left governments continued the shift
begun under governments of the Right toward equality of parents and
strengthening the rights of mothers within the family. Yvette Roudy,
as Minister of Woman's Rights, continued to work in this domain,
advancing a number of initiatives motivated by the goal of creating
equality among husband and wife. These included changes to marriage,
family, and tax laws (Stetson 1987, 97-101). Moreover, recognizing
the huge financial inequities that faced divorced women with children,
the Minister of Woman's Rights sponsored a law intended to compel
parents (usually fathers) to meet their financial responsibilities rather
than default on legally binding child support payments in the case of
divorce or separation.28 This measure was designed to relieve mothers
and children of the financial misery into which a defaulting father could
place them. From the beginning, it was presented as a measure that
would benefit children in female-headed families. Moreover, Roudy and
other members of the National Assembly understood the measure as
contributing to a redressment of the unequal gender power relations
that could exist in the case of marital breakdown. It brought the state
to the support of the weaker party.
Francois Mitterrand had also made a commitment to promoting
gender equality within the family, symbolized in part by his promise
to institute not simply a paid parental leave but one to be shared by
fathers and mothers.29 Even during the campaign, however, he equivocated about this sharing, in the name of noninterference in family
decisions. Nonetheless, he continued to claim that family policy could
contribute to a new gender division of labor, as well as to social solidarity, justice, and several other goals. Despite these formulations in
1981, the paid parental leaves enacted in 1984 as part of Dufoix's reforms and then extended and revised during the short period when the
Women in Mitterrand's France •
259
Right controlled the government (the cohabitation, 1986-88) bore very
little resemblance to what Mitterrand had proposed in 1981.
It took some time for a paid parental leave to come before the Cabinet, and by 1984 Mitterrand was becoming impatient (Attali 1993,
719). He called for a program that would allow parents to participate
in and organize their major responsibility—their children's education.30
Mitterrand recognized that family and work life were sometimes in
conflict, and he insisted that any new program should be designed so
that it would not interfere with parents' "legitimate career aspirations."
This formulation was coded language for women's employment. Women were likely to be the primary recipients of the paid parental leave
introduced by Georgina Dufoix, as she was forced to admit when the
law was being hotly debated and criticized by Socialist deputies.
From the moment of its introduction, Socialist members of the National Assembly rose in almost unanimous opposition to the proposed
new benefit, the allocation parentale d'education (APE). This benefit
was to be paid to any parent who, having been employed in the previous two years, stopped work in order to care for a third child. Parents
could go completely on leave or receive half the payment if working
half-time.
This new benefit raised the ire of Socialists, who alleged that it discriminated in three major ways. First, the APE was available only for
third children and therefore reinforced the discrimination among children due to their birth order (familiar from all past familialist programs). A second objection was that, given the fixed and minimal
amount to be paid to parents, it was considered to be a "mother's salary" masquerading as a parental leave. Given the differential between
women's and men's salaries, if any parent took the leave it was likely
to be the mother. Thus, the APE was a form of sex discrimination. A
third objection was that only those with jobs were eligible; unemployed
parents could not claim the APE. Moreover, little attention was given
in the proposal to facilitating parents' transition back into the labor
force at the end of the leave ("Le Projet de loi sur les families" 1984).
After a heated debate in both the National Assembly and Senate, in
which many Socialists rose to speak against the government, only the
third objection was addressed. The Minister accepted an amendment
that would give unemployed parents access to the APE and would give
recipients of the APE priority for training.31 Whereas several Socialist
deputies explicitly linked economic restructuring, atypical work, and
the APE, arguing that the APE would become a "mother's salary,"
because only women, who were generally lower paid than their male
partner, would be willing to forego their regular salary and accept the
APE, Dufoix ignored this economic analysis completely. In the face of
all arguments from empirical evidence about the realities of the gen-
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der division of labor, she also insisted that the notion this program was
directed toward "mothers" was misplaced, saying, "I want to underline that the APE is not a 'women's' benefit but one for parents. . . .
Certainly, given the current ways of thinking, it will most often be the
mother who utilizes it."32
In the period of cohabitation, Michele Barzach, responsible for family policy in the Chirac government, proposed important changes to
the APE. The level of payments were raised, and the conditions for
access to the benefit were eased. In essence, whereas Dufoix's version
required that parents really be taking a leave from work (or the search
for work), the Barzach formula gave parents who had worked for two
years any time in the last ten access to the APE. In other words, mothers who were already out of the labor force could claim the APE; with
this shift it really became a mother's salary. Moreover, when Barzach's
proposal was initially introduced, it made parents working part-time
after the birth of the child ineligible for the benefit. These alterations
in the APE sent a clear signal that the government, then in the hands
of the Right, sought to increase the pressure—via a more attractive and
effective program—on women to have a third child and to stop (or not
return to) work. Subsequent Socialist governments did not alter the
Right's formula.
Why Such a Mixed Record?
As this article has documented, Francois Mitterrand's and the Socialists' record in the domain of family policy is both different from what
was expected in 1981 and found wanting when measured against the
yardstick of its contribution to modernizing women's citizenship. Important reforms were undertaken to create equality before the law for parents. Also positive were reforms to simplify the complicated structure of
benefits and to shift the focus toward the rights of all children, including firstborn. The AJE is the best symbol of this success. Nonetheless,
family policy continues to be haunted by the ghost of heavy-handed
natalism and molded by the demographic fears of a "declining France."
Child-care places are still not available in sufficient numbers to meet
demand, at the same time that the commitment to publicly provided child
care has been weakened by greater reliance on individualized solutions.
Indeed, the latter have promoted a new form of inequality, between welloff working mothers who can afford to hire domestic help and the women they employ as childminders. Finally, parental leaves, if finally reimbursed, are paid at such a low rate that there is little hope that fathers
will ever utilize them. Such leaves have taken on the allure of a mother's
salary, designed in large part to address the unemployment crisis rather
than meet the needs of families and children.
Women in Mitterrand's France •
261
Most important, however, given our focus on the achievement of a
modern citizenship for women, is that there has been a return to older
discourses in which women's identity as women is submerged in their
identity as mothers. In 1981 Mitterrand and the Socialists pledged to
institute a progressive, leftist version of family policy. In particular, they
committed themselves both to using family policy to the benefit of
children and to implementing family policy measures that would not
interfere with women's economic autonomy. They pledged to democratize the family by altering the rights and duties of its members. This
promised break with the practices of the Right has not occurred.
Why has the promise been broken?33 A first element in any account
must be a consideration of the consequences of both economic crisis
and the Socialist government's turn to neoliberalism after 1983. Family benefits were further cut, as they had been under the Right. Costs
were held down for new programs, like the APE, whose effects on gender relations might have been different if the benefits had been paid at
a higher level. Moreover, the search for less costly alternatives to collectively provided child care intensified after 1983, and families were
thrown on their own resources and to individualized solutions. Therefore, the impact of new economic philosophies of "less state" as well
as reduced spending had consequences in the specific ways in which
family policy and gender equality were linked in these years.
Yet it is not satisfactory to put all the weight on economic constraints
or the overdetermination of social policy by macroeconomic policy. Just
as in the years of construction of the Keynesian welfare state there were
different ways to link economic and social policy and the choices made
had differential effects on relations of gender power, so too were there
many choices for implementing post-Keynesian economic and social
policy.34 After 1981, Mitterrand and the Socialist governments might
have continued to seek, within the range of the possible, those forms
of social—and particularly family—policy that would express a commitment to gender equality and expanded social citizenship. Instead,
they made other choices. To understand these selections, we must turn
to political and ideological factors.
One important factor was institutional. Between 1981 and 1986—
that is, the crucial moment in which Georgina Dufoix was developing and presenting her reforms of family policy (the Plan Famille)—
institutional responsibilities for "women" had been hived off from
the "family." Women's issues were the responsibility of the Ministry
of Woman's Rights, headed by Yvette Roudy, while family issues were
the purview of the Secretary of State for the Family. This structure
facilitated a bifurcation in policy. Proposals came from different people, with different ideological and policy proclivities as well as different bureaucratic and associational connections and policy net-
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works. To the Minister of Woman's Rights belonged the responsibility for creating equality, in the family as well as the workplace. The
mandate of the Minister of Social Affairs was to encourage a higher
birthrate, oversee family programs, and—it must be recognized—
prevent any formal intervention in the "private" decisions of families, even while instituting a set of incentives to "encourage" them to
have more children. Given this institutional fragmentation, it is not
surprising that the gender component of family policy could fall by
the wayside without powerful forces and protectors to prevent that
from occurring.35
The move to rigueur in 1983 marked a sea change in policy and
provoked a broad shift in the balance of forces within the government,
away from traditional democratic socialism and toward a neoliberalism that stressed equality of opportunity more than equality of condition and "solidarity" more than equality. After the much touted creation of her ministry in 1981, Yvette Roudy lost political influence
within the government from 1983 on, as reflected in the downgrading
of her status Qensonand Sineau 1995,203-4). This rebalancing of the
leftist forces included the marginalization of male Socialists like Pierre
Mauroy who had previously been counted on to pay attention to gender equality.36 This shift also brought new political fortune to Georgina Dufoix who was elevated to Minister of Social Affairs by Laurent
Fabius. With this promotion she could even more easily implement
policies to realize her self-appointed mandate: a recognition of the work
of stay-at-home mothers.37
Another political factor is, of course, the rise of the Front National
(FN) with its retrograde discourse on gender relations and the family.
Although both Socialists and the Right struggled to contain the influence of Jean-Marie Le Pen, they were compelled to address some of his
issues, including the so-called demographic crisis of France. While none
of these reforms, including the APE, ever took the form for which the
Front National called—that is, benefits only to "French" families—
there was a clear increase in the attention to fertility rates and the demographic "survival" of France not only on the Right but also among
the Socialists. Nowhere was this more evident than in the presentation
of the 1984 draft bill to the National Assembly, where the Minister of
Social Affairs and National Solidarity began her presentation by saying that family policy faced two directions: it was designed to create
social justice and solidarity as well as serve as a tool to fight the declining birthrate.38 Certainly Mitterrand and the Socialists' debate with
the Right in the National Assembly and in the country as a whole was
conducted in terms that allowed the government to present itself as
seriously concerned with "demographic preoccupations." In all of this,
the specificity of leftist natalism—which had characterized it before
Women in Mitterrand's France •
263
1981—had disappeared. It became harder and harder to distinguish the
leftists' position from that of the mainstream Right.
There were electoral factors to consider as well. In the run-up to the
1981 election, Mitterrand had been susceptible to feminist demands
because he had to close the gender gap that had favored Giscard
d'Estaing through the 1970s. Mitterrand needed more votes from
women (Sineau 1991, 64-65). After 1981 there was an attentuation
of the stiff competition for votes from women of the expanding intermediary strata, in which Giscard and Mitterrand had engaged in the
1970s. Forced to combat the Front National, the Right led by Jacques
Chirac could scarcely afford to represent itself as a convincing alternative for such women. The Socialists, seeking to solidify their support
among the most nationalist left-wing voters, could not afford to allow
Jean-Marie Le Pen to speak without challenge about the future of
France and its population. Therefore, the pressure to compete for being more "feminist" declined at the same time as the need to address
the FN's agenda became acute.
Moreover, Mitterrand's candidacy was the result of maneuvering
within the PS. Infighting among the Socialists had for a moment at the
end of the 1970s raised the profile of the radical leftist current that was
open to some of the discourse of radical feminism about patriarchy. The
First Secretary could not afford to lose any supporters to competing
currents. This dispute was finally settled by the unequivocal decision
in favor of rigueur and of Europe in 1983. As we have noted above,
the winners no longer included many drawn to feminist analyses, and
the new policies could proceed as if their consequences were gender
neutral. After 1988 an explicit electoral opening to the center allowed
the radicalism of Mitterrand's feminism to attenuate further.
Even these political constraints and strategic calculations do not
sufficiently account for the specific form of programs, especially the
APE. The extension of the AJE, for example, that many in the PS had
advocated in 1984, might have even better addressed natalist concerns,
particularly because it might have encouraged the birth of second children. To account for the lack of interest in that policy option, as well
as the lack of attention to the consequences of choices like the APE for
gender equality, we must also recognize the freedom that Mitterrand
enjoyed after 1981 in comparison to the years in which he actively
cultivated support from feminists and women in his long march to the
Elysee. The virtual disappearance of the women's movement in civil
society and the weakening of institutions, such as the unions and PS,
that had provided many feminists with a political home (even if the
relationship was not always without conflict) all freed Mitterrand from
constraint.
Taken together, these conditions allowed the President, always a
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natalist, to move away after 1981 from his previously more progressive vision and programs for encouraging families to have children
without penalizing the women who were their mothers. His proposed
measures had included attention to gender roles and might have permitted French mothers to overcome the limits to their citizenship which,
as the Socialist program said in 1980, followed from the fact that "their
place in society is still essentially defined by their status in the family."39 In effect, the family policy that emerged during his years in power did very little to change that representation or to empower women
to claim a new status.
NOTES
This is a much revised version of a paper presented to the Study Groups on
France and on Gender Relations, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, and to the International Conference of Europeanists, 1994. For helpful comments on earlier drafts, we thank Laura Frader, Peter A. Hall, and
George Ross.
1. These two issues are derived from Ann Orloff's theoretical incorporation of a gender analysis into the welfare state literature (1993). She also provides an excellent overview of work dealing with the impact of the welfare state
on women and gender relations.
2. Egalitarian feminists were only one, and never the dominant, wing of
the post-1968 women's movement. Other wings were committed to other
projects and were often critical of those feminists who were willing to work
with the parties of the Left. Such internal divisions meant that egalitarian feminists were relatively weak within the women's movement and that they could
not count on allies to push from the outside when they tried to pressure their
parties to shift position. For a description of the wings of the women's movement, see Jenson (1990).
3. One crucial aspect of the policy field is the regulation of relations within
the family through laws on marriage, divorce, and inheritance, which establish
the respective rights and duties of family members. Legislative reform that establishes greater equality between spouses and that reduces paternal authority
has helped women achieve modern citizenship. The second aspect of family policy
is social programs involving direct or indirect expenditures on families and their
needs. These types of expenditures, via transfer payments and tax expenditures
made by the state, have dominated the policy agenda in recent years. On the
history of family law before 1981, see Stetson (1987, 81-97).
4. This position had emerged among the "modernizers" of the Fourth
Republic, who were close to Pierre Mendes-France, and was carried into the
Fifth and translated into particular programs by politicians of the Center and
Left, including Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Jacques Delors, and Edgar Faure
(Lenoir 1991,162).
5. According to Laroque, many policymakers adopted the position that "la
femme libre n'est plus celle qui reste chez elle: c'estcellequia un metier" (1985,
21).
Women in Mitterrand's France •
265
6. Such thinking generated the complement familial in 1977. There was also
the beginning of a discussion of policy measures that might further encourage
families to increase their size, including creation of opportunities for part-time
work and for a long leave after childbirth that would not deprive women of
social benefits but would guarantee their return to work (Laroque 1985, 26).
7. While this was a crucial shift in the philosophy of family policy, it is
important not to exaggerate the absence of income-contingent programs during the "golden age." Some of the central programs (e.g., housing) were dependent on income levels from the start (Laroque 1985, 15).
8. "Nous voulons que tous les enfants qui naissent soient librement desires.
Nous voulons aussi que tous les enfants desires puissent naitre" (Mitterrand
1980,146). This double-barreled slogan was a direct quote from the program
(PS 1980, 309).
9. "Chacun doit pouvoir choisir. Mais c'est une responsabilite nationale
que d'assurer les conditions de ce choix" (speech of Francois Mitterrand, President of the Republic, to the Congres de l'Union Nationale des Associations
Familiales (UNAF), Palais des Congres, Nov. 21, 1981).
10. "Distinguer les families nombreuses, comme j'aime aujourd'hui a le
faire, n'est pas suggerer un modele familial. Chacun doit pouvoir choisir"
(Mitterrand's speech on the occasion of the awarding of the Medal of the
French Family, Elysee Palace, June 7, 1982).
11. It is important to maintain the distinction between familialism and
natalism. Otherwise it can lead to "surprises," such as that expressed by Philippe Steck (1993, 36), who writes that the "family" was always considered a
right-wing value, and "on dit les socialistes peu sensibles aux problemes demographiques." As the citations presented from both Mitterrand and the Socialists (PS 1980) demonstrate, the Socialists were sufficiently concerned about
demography to highlight it in a section of their campaign document.
12. Mitterrand had promised to create a ministry for women, to appoint
a very capable minister, and to give it all of the resources necessary to distinguish it from the ineffective and under-endowed Secretaries of State for the
"Female Condition" that Giscard had appointed (Choisir la Cause des Femmes
1981, 84ff). Roudy was a long-time supporter of Mitterrand. For a discussion
of the work of this ministry and Roudy, see Sineau (1991).
13. "Trouvez-moi une femme de province avec enfants" (quoted in Guichard 1993, 195). For timing see, Estier and Neiertz (1987, 116).
14. This is Neiertz's observation. She characterizes the appointment of
Dufoix as evidence that Mitterrand protects his flanks (Estier and Neiertz 1987,
117). When Roudy was demoted, women's rights had the same ranking as the
family within the government. With the Fabius government, the separate Secretary of State for the Family disappeared, being absorbed into the Ministry
of Social Affairs. Thus, the Plan Famille that Dufoix brought to the Cabinet
was the project of a high-ranking and powerful minister.
15. According to Jacques Attali, while the speech for March 8 was being
prepared Dufoix wrote to Mitterrand encouraging him to speak of the family
as well as women. He seems to have taken her advice (Attali 1993, 181).
16. Thus, the wife whose husband was unemployed needed to be given
more choice.
17. "II fait l'eloge des families nombreuses et souhaite une reprise de la
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Jenson and Sineau
demographie: Nous n'interdirons pas la contraception, c'est normal, c'est la
liberte, mais cela est negatif.... La liberation de la femme, c'est souvent d'avoir
des enfants" (Attali 1993, 212).
18. For example, for the June 7, 1982, presentation of the Medal of the
French Family, Mitterrand was accompanied by Jacques Delors, Minister of
the Economy and Finance, and Georgina Dufoix, whom he presented to the
UNAF as "your" minister.
19. The General called for "twelve million beautiful babies in twelve years"
(Rabaut 1978, 306).
20. Speech by Mitterrand, at the childbirth clinic, "Antoine Beclere,"
Clamart, Dec. 31, 1983.
21. Speech, June 7, 1982. Georgina Dufoix tended to use the same form
of analysis. For example, "Les nations fortes sont inventives, creatives. Ce sont
elles qui ont le plus de cerveaux, qui allient la puissance militaire a la puissance industrielle et artistique" (Dufoix 1983, 48). Clearly the President and
his Secretary of State were on the same wavelength.
22. These increases came in two stages of 25 percent each between July
1981 and February 1982 (Steck 1993, 37-38). Housing programs are not,
strictly speaking, a family benefit but they are a policy crucial to the well-being of families, as well as being a favorite sector from which to launch a Keynesian reflation.
23. Between 1980 and 1984, for example, the purchasing power of families with two children increased by 34.5 percent, while that of families with
three went up by only 7.5 percent (Lenoir 1991, 180). The second 25 percent
increase in family allowance benefits was disproportionately concentrated on
families with two children.
24. Efforts to create more child-care spaces through the contrats creches
between local governments and the Caisses d'allocations familiales did appear
with the decentralization of the early years of Left government. Announced
as a measure to create 100,000 places, such contracts generated only 20,000
before the program was terminated in 1989.
25. For an analysis of the problems of atypical work, see Jenson and Sineau
(1995, chap. 7).
26. In presenting the draft bill to the National Assembly, Socialist Guy Chanfrault, rapporteur for the Commission des affaires culturelles, familiales et sociales, was quite explicit about the natalist intent of this project and about the
likelihood that families that might be expected to increase in size would be the
real "winners" under the AJE. He presented a detailed statistical analysis as support for his point (Assemblee Nationale, 2d sess., Dec. 4, 1984, p. 6619).
27. The Cabinet described the purpose of the law in these terms: "Dormer
aux families les moyens de choisir et de realiser leurs projets familiaux et, en
particulier, celui d'avoir plusieurs enfants" ("Le communique" 1984).
28. According to the figures presented to the National Assembly, 620,000
children were due child support payments established by a judicial decision.
Fully half of these payments were never made or were paid in a very unpredictable fashion (Assemblee Nationale, 2d sess., Nov. 28, 1984, p. 6456).
Therefore, an existing benefit (allocation de soutien familial [ASF]) was ex-
Women in Mitterrand's France •
267
tended in December 1984 to cover children whose parents were not paying
the child support established in the divorce or separation agreements.
29. Unpaid parental leaves had been available since 1977. Being unpaid
and with few guarantees of reemployment, the leaves were not utilized by many
mothers or fathers (who became eligible for such leaves in 1984). They could
also be combined with part-time or reduced time employment up until the
child's third birthday [Liaisons sociales-Legislation sociale 1991). Mitterrand's
innovation was to promise a paid leave.
30. "La famille est le lieu d'education au sens le plus haut." This is from
the letter Mitterrand sent to Laurent Fabius when Fabius became Prime Minister. Mitterand had worked on the letter for over year, and it constituted a
major statement of principle (see Attali 1993, 676, for these citations and pp.
672-78 for the letter as a whole). In this context, Mitterrand also called for
higher family allowance payments, especially for those most in need. Nonetheless, the amounts devoted to family benefits continued to decline after 1984.
31. The other amendments proposed by the Socialist party, including one
to take the money destined for the APE and put it toward the AJE, were not
accepted by the government ("Projet de loi sur la famille" 1984).
32. "Je tiens des present a souligner qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une mesure feminine, mais d'une mesure parentale. . . . Certes, en I'etat actuel des mentalites,
ce sera le plus souvent la mere qui demandera a en beneficier" (Assemblee
Nationale, 2d sess., Dec. 4, 1984, p. 6632, emphasis added).
33. For an overview of the reasons for the mixed record of the Mitterrand
years for gender relations in general, see Jenson and Sineau (1994a).
34. For an elaboration of this argument see Jenson (1987a, 537ff). For a
description of the variety, see Orloff (1993).
35. During the cohabitation, "women" disappeared while "the family"
remained. After 1988 the Socialists rehabilitated a separate, but much less
prestigious, governmental body for women's rights. Michele Andre was Prime
Minister Rocard's Secretaire d'fitat, Chargee des droits des femmes. Later,
Veronique Neiertz became Secretaire d'fitat, Chargee des droits des femmes
et de la consommation. Family policy remained within the purview of the
ministries of social affairs.
36. It was, for example, Prime Minister Mauroy who announced the longawaited reimbursement of abortion costs by the Social Security regime on
March 8,1982, thereby provoking a very angry reaction by the President (Jenson and Sineau 1995, 198-201).
37. From the moment of her nomination to be Secretaire d'fcat, charge de
la famille, she spoke of the need to "recognize" the role of these mothers
(Chombeau 1981).
38. "La politique familiale a une double preoccupation: la justice sociale
et la solidarite a l'egard des families, d'une part, la volonte de lutter contre la
baisse de la natalite que connalt notre pays, comme les voisins, d'autre part"
(AN 1984).
39. Writing of women before the 1981 election, the Socialists said, "Sa place
dans la societe est encore definie essentiellement par son statut familial" (PS
1979, 125).
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REFERENCES
Assemblee Nationale (AN). 1984. Projet de loi relatif aux mesures en faveur
des jeunes families et des families nombreuses. Annexe au proces-verbal de
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