ABSTRACT
France’s victory also seemed to demonstrate that the country was ready to hold its own in the new globalized world of the twenty-first century. In the broader realm of public affairs, France also experienced both successes and crises after 1995. A solid period of economic growth under a generally respected Socialist government in the late 1990s ended surprisingly when the candidate of the far-right Front National eliminated that government’s leader in the preliminary round of the presidential election of 2002. France’s 2002 elections took place in the new world climate resulting from the spectacular terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001. The large vote for Le Pen in the 2002 presidential elections was a reminder that the integration of France’s large population of recent immigrants remained a burning issue. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, France was becoming an increasingly multicultural and multiracial society, and ideas about women’s roles were changing.
