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Fieldwork conducted since 2001 on gender parity in a city council is revisited in this paper. This reflexive approach clarifies how gender comes to play, how actors play with or are played by gender. First, political voices have to do not just with sex, but with gender. It is not nature speaking, as these voices signify power relationships. Second, gender does appear at times as a constraint, and at other times as a resource; but this largely results from differences in the way it is staged. Third, sociological interpretations of gender interact with interpretations by social actors.