Women’s Suffrage: Explaining the French Exception

Women’s Suffrage: Explaining the French Exception

Victor Gay (Toulouse School of Economics) 

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ABSTRACT:

Despite its early experiment with manhood suffrage, France was among the last countries in Europe to extend voting rights to women. Existing accounts of this French exceptionalism point to the key role of a group of legislators, the Radicals, who blocked suffrage extension because they believed women would vote for pro-Church parties, undermining Radicals' vote share and reversing the political victories against the Catholic Church. This account emphasizes legislators' expected loss under new institutional rules, assuming a pro-Church bias among women. In contrast, we emphasize legislators' expected loss absent a change to the institutional status quo. Doing so highlights the connection between support for women's suffrage and support for proportional representation, especially among legislators facing electoral loss under existing electoral rules. Not only does our argument better explain legislators' voting patterns in both the upper and lower chambers, it also highlights how World War I and its massive death toll contributed to women's exclusion from politics.

BIO:

Victor Gay is an assistant professor in economics at the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST). His work is at the intersection of economic history, political economy, and labor economics.