^aISP Cachan, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 61 avenue du président Wilson, 94235, Cachan, Cedex, France. E-mail: anne.revillard@gapp.ens-cachan.fr

Abstract

Owing to demographic, economic and social reasons, the family has been a key element in the building of the French Republic. Familialism, here defined as the defense of the family as an institution, is therefore strongly institutionalized within the state. Even as it implied changing views on women's labor-force participation over the years, this ideology has been an important source of gender-bias in French law and public policy. For this reason, it is likely to have influenced the women's policy agencies (WPAs) that were created, starting in the 1960s, with the specific aim of promoting women's rights and interests. In this paper, I explore the paradoxical assumption, according to which women's policy, while being at odds with familialism, was also influenced by it, and I offer an explanation for this influence, by means of an analysis of the discursive and political opportunities faced by WPAs.