Cabinets and concrete floors: the women in Macron’s cabinet strengthen the case for gender parity in government

The first cabinet appointed by new French President Emmanuel Macron contained a 50-50 gender balance, with eleven out of the twenty-two cabinet members being women. Karen Beckwith writes that Macron’s decision to appoint a gender-balanced cabinet should not have come as a surprise. Drawing on research in seven separate democracies with her colleagues Susan Franceschet and Claire Annesley, she illustrates that there is now an informal ‘concrete floor’ for women’s participation in cabinets, indicating a minimum number of women who must be appointed if the government is to avoid criticism.