Nationwide strikes highlight France’s struggle to close its gender pay gap

MARSEILLE, France (CN) — On Thursday, France’s largest workers’ union led over 150 strikes across the country calling for a rollback on the country’s controversial retirement reforms, better working conditions and increased protection of public services.

Narrowing the gender pay gap in France, where men earn an average of 22% more Euros than women do, was also part of the action plan. And despite years of increased legislation, new initiatives and more attention on the issue, it doesn’t seem to be significantly improving. And experts and demonstrators seem pessimistic about the outlook.

“I think that in France, we have a taste for sound bites or big phrases, so there is an optical illusion because of public policies,” Rachel Silvera, an economist and co-director of MAGE, a labor market and gender research group, told Courthouse News. “Since [French president Emmanuel] Macron’s first term, gender equality has been a major focus, so we have a lot of speeches, and even laws … and we therefore have the illusion that these laws will allow real equality — and that is still not the case.”

Adeline — who trains employees in a local business, and asked not to be identified by her last name — was standing among the crowd of demonstrators against the backdrop of Marseille’s Old Port on Thursday morning. Three large trucks linked to the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), the nation’s biggest union, were stationed at an intersection, blasting music; one man sat on top of one, drinking a Heineken.

“We’re here to fight against the retirement law, the segregation of public services, inequality and discrimination,” Adeline told Courthouse News as Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” rang through the streets.

For her, the story is personal. Adeline works on a team of three, including another woman and a man. They all do the same job, but their male coworker makes 200 euros per month more than them.

“I find it revolting,” she said. “Even the male colleague doesn’t understand.”

Adeline said the company implemented a sort of salary equality initiative, which is supposed to ensure equal pay between male and female employees. But the catch is that if the difference is less than 5%, “it doesn’t count,” she said. When Adeline brought the information to her boss, she said he sort of shrugged, since the 200 euros fell under the 5% bracket.

This is happening on bigger scales. According to Silvera, in 2019 France proudly introduced and implemented an “Equality Index,” which requires all companies with more than 50 employees to provide data on salary gaps. However, it became something that has somewhat allowed France to wash its hands of the issue.

“When we look closely, we see that practically all companies have a very good score on their index,” Silvera said. “So, it’s as if we solved the problem of inequality, and France prides itself on being among the countries that are most successful in equality when that is not true at all — the figures attest to the opposite.”

France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economics Studies, known as INSEE, found that in 2023 — the most recent year that the data were available — women made roughly 22% less than men in the private sector, and composed roughly 24% of the workforce for the country’s top 1% paid jobs. This gap was more pronounced for parents, the institute said, both because mothers worked significantly less hours and because their salaries were lower from the start.

This can become a huge problem when a father falls sick, for example. Cathy Sanguedolce, a CGT member who attended the demonstration in Marseille on Thursday, told Courthouse News that when women already earn a smaller salary, if something happens to their partner, the family could be dealing with a huge financial hit.

“We’re tired, and it’s not getting better, it’s worse and worse,” she said. “We can’t be optimistic with things that don’t advance … people are saying, why are you doing all of these strikes? And it’s not for fun, people are losing a day of their salary, and it’s not fun to lose a day of pay.”

Emmanuelle Auriol, a professor at the University of Toulouse and member of the Council of Economic Analysis, told Courthouse News that women also deal with what’s known as a “child penalty,” meaning the pull to prioritize flexibility over salary when choosing a job.

“For example, ‘I’ll choose a job that is close to my home, to school, so that I can also pick up the children after school,’” she explained. “Or ‘I’ll take a job where there is not a lot of travel, so all this means that I change jobs, I’ll take a job that’s more flexible, less paid, less ambitious, more relaxed.’”

According to Auroil, women generally lose 30% of their income after bearing children. Men’s careers are not impacted.

Unions are trying to help enforce gender equality laws in the workforce. The laws aren’t much use without evaluation and sanctions, according to Silvera, but this is often easier said than done.

“The CGT is pushing for more sanctions to monitor companies,” she said. “But the paradox is we have limited the rights of labor inspection.”

Silvera advocates for more transparency across reports, real figures and an external moderating force that produces the Equality Index, rather than companies themselves. Also, she says, there should really be reforms to compensate “not just equal pay for equal work, but also for work of equal value.”

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