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Sex Quotas And Burkini Bans, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Essay recounts how feminist theorists and activists managed to write their ideals into the fabric of French law and culture, and how nonfeminists began to appropriate those ideals. Parité, the 2000 law that requires half of all candidates for public office be women, saw French feminists first engineer a change in French universalism to respect sex difference; although not wholly successful, Parité advanced women's political inclusion. Then, like a drop of water in a pond, these feminist ideas disappeared in plain sight: they became intrinsic to French state norms and public values. As they became woven into such norms, …