Seven months pregnant, Marois hesitated before entering politics. After some support, both her husband and René Lévesque convinced her to run for the PQ in the 1981 general election. After winning a contested nomination, she ran in the La Peltrie electoral district and won with a 5,337-vote majority on her Liberal opponent, as one of only eight women being elected that year. Only 11 days after becoming a member of the National Assembly of Quebec, she gave birth to her second child, Félix, on April 24.