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In the West ? and particularly in France ? feminism operates by waves. This implies periods if not of back flow in any case of lesser visibility. The demand for parity that emerged in the mid-1990s provoked a furious argument in France that blurred the traditional border separating equality feminists from those asserting sexual difference. This article reconsiders the origins of the debates on parity to try to analyse the nature of men’s resistance to the division of power in the public sphere. It formulates the hypothesis that, while patriarchy is declining, there continues a silent demonstration of a pact between the “brothers”, in other words a brotherhood that is all the more solid because parity threatens the division between private and public ? a private sphere which is, definitely, political.