In the credo of Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme right-wing National Front (FN), feminism is an "ideology of debauchery", a scourge which like immigrants, Jews and European integration threatens the French way of life. At a recent FN conference in Toulon, Marie-France Stirbois, one of 11 FN members of the European Parliament, delivered a lecture entitled "Liberate Women From Feminism" in which she described feminism as "Lesbian proselytism" and preached the merits of femininity.

"We should not be their equals," she said of men, "nor their superiors, nor their inferiors. Let us be an indispensable complement to them, knowing how to comfort them, support them, but sometimes surpass them."

Ms Stirbois made her speech at the height of the power struggle between Mr Le Pen and his deputy, Bruno Megret, which was sparked off by a woman. Next week the Versailles appeals court will consider whether to maintain Mr Le Pen's two-year ineligibility to stand for public office.

If his ineligibility is confirmed, Mr Le Pen announced this summer, his wife Jany will lead the FN's list in next June's European elections. But Mr Megret believes he, not Jany Le Pen, should head the list, and he enraged his boss by telling French newspapers that Jany's candidacy was "not a good idea". The incident which led to Mr Le Pen's ineligibility speaks volumes about the FN's consideration for women and the democratic process. During the May 1997 general election campaign, Mr Le Pen physically attacked Annette Peulvast-Bergeal, the Socialist candidate who stood against his daughter, Marie-Caroline. Shouting "I've had it, I'm going to throw you all out of here," the FN leader pushed, grabbed and scratched Ms Peulvast-Bergeal as he tried to tear the mayor's emblem from her jacket.

Mr Le Pen has already given important positions to his daughters and son-in-law, but the promotion of Jany to chief European candidate prompted protests of nepotism from within the party. Le Pen loyalists said it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, for it was Mr Megret who started FN leaders' tradition of sending their wives into battle in February 1997, when his wife Catherine won the Vitrolles town hall after he was declared ineligible for irregularities in campaign funding.

Catherine Megret is her husband's puppet, and Mr Le Pen refers to Bruno Megret as "the mayor consort" of Vitrolles. In interviews, Mr Megret often answers questions put to Catherine. Yet she has mastered FN doctrine well enough to merit a three-month suspended prison sentence and 50,000-franc (£5,952) fine for telling a German newspaper that she, like Mr Le Pen, believes in "the inequality of races".

Neither Jany Le Pen nor Catherine Megret have ever been anything other than housewives. In a theatrical series of interviews calculated to focus media attention on the FN and needle Bruno Megret, Jean-Marie Le Pen announced his wife would replace him if need be.

"I'd rather stay in the kitchen," she responded. It took a month to persuade her to make the ultimate sacrifice of defending the Le Pen name in the European election.

"I hope to remain in my role as a woman for the rest of my life, in any case, until [the election] next year," Mrs Le Pen (66) said. "I'm a good little soldier and if I really have to go into battle, I'll numb myself and I'll do it. I'll be a candidate if I really have to, but as a last resort and against my wishes."

Not exactly a rousing bid for office, but the sort of complaint one would expect from a Stepford wife. Mr Le Pen's first wife, Pierrette, posed nude for Playboy back in 1987 and described her ex-husband as a cruel dictator. Jany Le Pen comes from the same sexy, plastic-surgery, socialite, kept-woman mould as Pierrette.

Her second husband, the rich businessman Jean Garnier, continues to be a friend and contributor to Jean-Marie Le Pen. Like another FN wife, Brigitte Bardot, Mrs Le Pen campaigns for animal rights.

Her husband is a friend of Saddam Hussein, and Jany Le Pen has also spoken tearfully of the plight of Iraqi children suffering under UN sanctions. But no one can imagine her debating the merits of the Amsterdam Treaty or EMU.

Tomorrow another FN wife, Cendrine Le Chevallier, will go to the polls in a Toulon by-election. Unlike Catherine Megret and Jany Le Pen, Mrs Le Chevallier is a long-time FN militant and a true political animal. Her husband Jean-Marie was elected mayor of Toulon in 1995, and won the FN's only seat in the 1997 parliamentary election.

After his victory was annulled because of irregularities in campaign funding, Cendrine replaced him in the first by-election last May, when she lost by 33 votes to the Socialist Odette Casanova. That election was also annulled, but Mrs Le Chevallier's loss was attributed to her power struggle with another female FN city councillor, Eliane de la Brosse.

"You make me vomit. You're a traitor. You deserve seven bullets in your skin," Mrs Le Chevallier - always dressed in Chanel and Hermes - shouted when Mrs de la Brosse opposed her costly pet project for a children's holiday home. The Le Chevalliers' murky, autocratic management of Toulon has earned them the nickname of "the Ceausescus of the Var".

Jean-Marie Le Pen says women have always replaced their husbands, brothers and sons in time of war, and the FN claims it is helping to feminise French political life. On the contrary, say opponents of the FN; the extreme right's practice of letting housewives without political experience stand in place of their husbands shows the deepest contempt for the political process.

"It is the exact opposite of the political emancipation of women," the philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky told the left-wing newspaper Liberation . "The FN is perpetuating the subordination of women and their economic, emotional and political dependence on one specific individual, their husbands."