Emmanuel Macron, the newly-elected president of France, announced the members of his cabinet on Tuesday. The 22-person administration boasts equal parts men and women.
"It is a government of renewal," the president's office said in a statement to The New York Times. In addition to being gender-balanced, Macron's cabinet also includes a diverse set of appointees that lean politically left and right, and individuals from public, private and nonprofit sectors.
Macron's decision is similar to that of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who filled half of his cabinet with women "because it's 2015." With 11 men and 11 women, Macron's team is more equal than any American cabinet in history, the Times points out.
Here's the full cabinet with Macron below. (If you count the number of people in the photo, the 12th man is France's Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, to the left of Macron.)
And here are all the women of the cabinet, posing with the president and prime minister. The front row, left to right: Labour Minister Muriel Pénicaud, Health Minister Agnes Buzyn, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, President Emmanuel Macron, Armed Forces Minister Sylvie Goulard, Culture Minister Françoise Nyssen and Higher Education Minister Frederique Vidal.
Second row, left to right: Junior Minister for Disabilities Sophie Cluzel, Minister in charge of European Affairs Marielle de Sarnez, Overseas Territories Minister Annick Girardin, Sports Minister Laura Flessel-Colovic, Junior Minister for Equality Between Men and Women Marlene Schiappa and Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne.
The cabinet had their first weekly meeting in the Élysée presidential Palace in Paris today.
In January, Macron showed his dedication to gender equality when he said in a speech: "Women currently represent 53 percent of the electoral body, so it's unacceptable that they make up less than 30 percent of those elected to the National Assembly," he announced. "Unlike other political parties, we plan to respect gender parity."
However, despite appointing a gender-balanced cabinet, Macron was criticized for not taking his pledge to gender equality seriously enough. The New York Times reports the president didn't "give the person responsible for women's equality a full-fledged ministry" and nominated "a lower-ranked state secretary instead."
