Women are rare in the world of arbitration. All disciplines and all levels combined France has 43000 women on 210000 referees, a rate of about 20%. In the high level they do not represent more than 16% of the referees. According to the ministerial list of referees and high level judges in 2011 / 2012, the number of licensees in a discipline and the number of referees are not correlated.
For example, in football women represent 3,2% of the licensees but are 23% among high level referees. In riding they represent 81,3% of the licensees but only count 30% of referees. Some federations are very late in the race for parity between referees: fencing (3 on 27 is 11%), handball (2 on 15 or 13%), judo (1 on 6 is
16%), wrestling (1 on 7 is 14%), rugby (1 on 9 or 11%), skiing (1 on 9 or 11%) and tennis (7 on 58 or 12%). Note that some disciplines have no female referee in their 2011 / 2012 squad, it is volleyball, archery, taekwondo, surfing, rugby league French boxing and bowls.