An Intersectional and Post-Colonial Feminist Reading of Female Politicians’ political practices, tactics, and experience of violence in France post-2012

In the last decade, we have witnessed a rise in reported assaults, intimidations, and direct violence directed at politically active women worldwide. Research on violence against women in politics has been criticized to have focused on physical violence which is limited and does not recognize other forms of activities or instances that can be defined as a form of ‘violence’ against women. These traditional theories of electoral violence do recognize the existence of intimidation against female candidates which Mona Lena Krook defines as a form of psychological violence or the damage of the woman's property i.e., economic violence. However, this type of violence is often characterized as a gendered form of political violence directed at women. Political violence traditionally interferes with a political process. Violence against women becomes an extension of this conceptualization despite challenging values of ‘gender equality and heteronormative gender roles which encourages women to be in the private sphere and men in the public sphere. The implementation of gender quotas and parity laws saw the formal inclusion of women and is argued to be a way to redress the gender imbalance in elected assemblies. France was the first country to implement a parity law in 2000 which was applied to municipal and senate elections in 2001 and the legislative elections in 2002. This inclusion only benefitted the majority of women in France not marginalized women. It was not until 2012 following the election of Francois Holland that France saw a gender-equal and more diverse appointment of women on a national level. However, violence against formally elected female politicians on both a national and local level remains. This research aims to conceptualize the different forms of violence experienced by female politicians on a national and local level in France and identify what tactics are adopted to challenge these forms of violence and enact their tasks and practices in politics. This will be done using an intersectional and post-colonial feminist perspective. This perspective allows for a non-homogenous of female politicians’ experiences of violence. Additionally, it enables the deconstruction of exclusionary structures and logic of imperial and post-colonial nations. I use intersectionality as an analytical tool, I look at the intersections of different social categories such as class, race, education, ethnicity, geographic location, etc. Hence, I move beyond the victimization of these women as well as their lack of agency by highlighting their narratives and background. I contribute to intersectional and post-colonial feminist scholarship on women’s political participation. I conduct a narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted in France with local and national female politicians. I argue that their social categories and capital disposition shape their political practices, tactics, careers, and experiences of violence in politics in France.