France presents bill to promote women politicians

PARIS, Nov 28 (Reuters) France's conservative government presented draft legislation today that will force parties to promote more women to frontline politics.

Ministers vowed to get the bill passed into law before the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections, although the measures will not come into force until 2008.

Socialist favourite Segolene Royal is aiming to become France's first female president at next year's vote, but her emergence as the election frontrunner has failed to disguise the fact that France has relatively few women politicians.

Under the many terms of the new bill, the executives of regional governments and large communal assemblies will have to have equal numbers of men and women.

The bill will also increase financial penalties for parties that fail to reach parity between male and female candidates at national elections.

At present, parties that miss their quota have to forfeit half their public funding for the elections. That will rise to three-quarters when the bill becomes law.

The government believes the various provisions in the law will bring up to 4,000 more women into high-level politics.

''This law is going to enable our democracy to grow,'' President Jacques Chirac told ministers on Tuesday, the government spokesman quoted him as saying.

''This law is going to push forward women's rights.'' France only granted women the vote in 1945 and has failed to draw many into top flight politics, despite a law introduced in 2000 aimed at creating parity between the sexes in parliament.

According to data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union only 12.2 per cent of lawmakers are women, leaving France languishing in 84th place in a global table of 135 countries and trailing almost all its European Union partners.

At the last national elections in 2002, only 19 percent of candidates for the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) were women while the opposition Socialist party hit 35 percent.

For 2007, the Socialist party has promised to respect the parity law for the first time, but only 30 percent of UMP candidates are expected to be women.

REUTERS KR RK2340