Women’s Delegations were set up in both chambers of the French Parliament in 1999. Initially set up to assist the passage of gender parity legislation and to introduce gender mainstreaming, these bodies – the first explicitly gender-balanced agencies in parliament - have succeeded in stitching themselves into the fabric of the Senate and National Assembly in four separate legislatures, under right- and leftwing majorities. Some initial research has looked at the institutional design of the Delegation in the National Assembly and the way it operates within the committee system.
The debates surrounding the creation of these Delegations revealed a strong desire to open parliamentary deliberation to organisations and individuals from civil society – ‘to make women’s voices heard in legislation’, as one of the sponsors put it during the vote. This presentation will anaylse how this has worked out in practice by comparing the organisations and individuals called as witnesses by the Delegation and by the legislative committees, and by analysing feedback from women’s agencies. On the basis of participants’ appraisal of subsequent legislation, cases of Delegation success and failure to incorporate civil society demands can be identified.
