The Front National and the Disappearing Gender Gap

3 March 2016, 6.00-8.00pm
The French radical right traditionally attracted more support from men than women. While still more men than women vote for the Front National, this gender gap is closing today. Nonna Mayer, emerita Research Professor at Science Po Paris, is one of the foremost experts on the Front National. She will explore this trend and look into why this is happening. Co-hosted by the European Institute and the Political Studies Association (PSA), her talk will be the inaugural PSA French Politics Annual Lecture. 

• Nonna Mayer is emerita CNRS Research Director at the Centre d'études européennes of Sciences Po Paris. She has been chairing the French Political Science Association (Association française de science politique) since 2005, and is the coordinator of an AFSP research group on electoral studies:  FEEL/Futur des études électorales. She is the editor of the series « Contester » at the Presses de Sciences Po, focused on changes in modes of collective action. Her main research topics are political attitudes and behaviour, racism and anti-Semitism, right-wing extremism, and social precariousness. She is presently conducting (with Florence Haegel and Céline Braconnier) a new research project on precariousness and politics - Précarité, Politique, Participation (PPP) -, centred on the process of empowerment and access to citizenship of populations helped by voluntary associations.

• Discussant: Aurélien Mondon is Senior Lecturer in French and Comparative Politics at the University of Bath. He works on racism, populism, the far right and the crisis of democracy.

• Chair: Philippe Marlière is Professor of French and European Politics at UCL.

Co-hosted with the French Politics Group of the Political Studies Association.