Political Debate: A Man's Game? Public Participation in Television Debate Programmes During the Presidential Election Campaign of 2007

This article focuses on public participation in televised debates broadcast during the French presidential election campaign, between January and March 2007, examining women's access to public political debate and their legitimacy as representatives or accredited spokespersons. An initial quantitative section reveals that women are numerically inferior to men in speaking roles and often secondary to men in terms of the organisation of the debate. A subsequent qualitative study of two contrasting programmes, one from the major private channel TF1, the other from the educational public channel France 5, shows how women assert their right to speak and battle against the constraints imposed by the programme organisers. The study concludes that women's participation is greater and more legitimised in channels with lesser impact and resonance; moreover the rules of bienséance governing live interaction on television are gendered such that interactions vary greatly according to the gender of the interlocutors.