Why isn’t everyone celebrating Marine Le Pen’s victory in France?

by philg

The United Nations assures us that “We need more women leaders to sustain peace and development”:

The evidence is clear: wherever women take part in a peace process, peace lasts longer. In fact, a peace agreement, which includes women, is 35 per cent more likely to last at least 15 years. And without the solid foundation of peace, development is doomed to be unstable and unsustainable.

A recent Secretary-General’s report to the Security Council called women leadership and participation in peacebuilding a “prerequisite for the fulfillment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” In other words, without women’s participation, we will not achieve lasting peace; and without the stability of peace, we will not achieve sustainable development.

Put forward by the Resolution 1325, the idea that women should be given greater access to leadership roles in peace and security is closely aligned with the aim of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, on gender equality and women empowerment.

The Science confirms this theory across all domains. “Women leaders make work better. Here’s the science behind how to promote them” (American Psychological Association):

When more women are empowered to lead, everyone benefits. Decades of studies show women leaders help increase productivity, enhance collaboration, inspire organizational dedication, and improve fairness.

Why would any company or country ever select a non-woman as a leader? McKinsey says that diversity leads to huge profits (NVIDIA’s GPU development lab is a rich tapestry of Black and Latinx engineers in a wide array of gender IDs?). Note that, predictably, two white males say that McKinsey’s work in this area is just as beneficial to society as McKinsey’s work with Enron and the opioid pill vendors. “McKinsey’s Diversity Matters/Delivers/Wins Results Revisited”:

Combined with the erroneous reverse-causality nature of McKinsey’s tests, our inability to quasi-replicate their results suggests that despite the imprimatur given to McKinsey’s studies, they should not be relied on to support the view that US publicly traded firms can expect to deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives.

More from the United Nations, this time a complaint that only 26 of the world’s countries have implemented McKinsey’s recommendations and selected female heads of state:

Given all of the above, shouldn’t we expect celebratory and congratulatory tweets from the United Nations, UN Women, McKinsey, et al. following Marine Le Pen’s recent electoral victory in France, the world’s 7th largest country by GDP (while working 32 hours/week and taking 8 weeks of vacation per year!)? Instead, the Guardian describes female leadership in France as “unthinkable”. The Washington Post says “Marine Le Pen is now part of France’s mainstream. That should scare us all.”

Separately, no discussion of France is complete without this poster:

10 thoughts on “Why isn’t everyone celebrating Marine Le Pen’s victory in France?”

  1. Women are biological competitors not cooperators and the last thing any woman wants is another woman to succeed.

  2. The actual leader is a man, Jordan Bardella. He does not sit in the French parliament, so Ms LePen is the leader of the parliamentary group of the party.

    You have wikipedia, right?

    • Frederico: I admit to not being an expert on the French system beyond knowing that it requires a First Lady old enough to have witnessed the Normandy invasion and also that it requires a “path to Sharia” for both immigrants and natives. Is is unfair to characterize Marine Le Pen as “a leader” even if someone else might be characterized as “Supreme Leader”?

    • Well, I remembered that I have some old dusty Wikipedia in my basement, so I found it, took a look, and found following:
      Jordan Bardella is president of National Rally (ex National Front) since November 2022, after 11 years long presidency of Marine Le Pen, after 30 years long presidency of her dad, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Jordan Bardella was in relation with Kerridwen Chatillon, daughter of Frédéric Chatillon, whose former partner was Marie d’Herbais de Thun, friend of Marine Le Pen. Since 2020, Jordan Bardella is in relation with Nolwenn Olivier, niece of Marine Le Pen, what definitely puts him closer to the source, and voilà, two years later our Jordan is president of National Rally (which led to allegations of nepotism in favour of Bardella inside the RN party, as my old dusty Wikipedia says). It all sounds as very juicy, very french story, but does it enable us to call Jordan Bardella the “actual leader”. It seems that our Jordan was somewhat following the career path of Kamala Harris, and it would be very hard to consider Kamala the “actual leader”, especially considering the cognitive superiority of Joe Biden.

    • mata: If you type “Nolwenn Olivier” into Google, I think you’ll agree with me that she appears to be at least 50 years too young to be the First Lady of France. Ergo, Jordan Bardella can never be the Supreme Leader of France.

  3. Maybe this is why the Palestinians aren’t getting the peace they so desperately want. They should swap out their leadership for a new all-women set of leaders. Ha-mom-mas.

    • A female leader could change popular opinion. From last month: “Support for armed struggle as the best means to end Israeli occupation and achieve statehood rose among Palestinians while backing for the militant group Hamas also increased slightly in the last three months, according to an opinion poll.
      The poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) showed support for armed struggle climbed by 8 percentage points to 54% of those surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-rise-support-armed-struggle-by-palestinians-2024-06-13/

      (I find it interesting that the IDF has fought in such a way that Gazans consider war to be a manageable lifestyle. I don’t think that civilians in Germany and Japan polled in the spring of 1945 would have responded with enthusiasm regarding continued armed struggle.)

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