Companies Must Make Plans for Gender Equality, French Government Says
By Rick Mitchell
PARIS--Beginning in early 2012, France-based companies with 50 or more employees must have action plans setting out goals for achieving gender equality or potentially face major fines, Nathalie Devernay, a Lyon-based attorney for Bird & Bird, told BNA earlier this month.
Article 99 of France's 2010 retirement reform law (Law 2010-1330 of Nov. 9, 2010) stipulated that companies with 50 employees or more must establish plans by Jan. 1, 2012, for achieving equality between female and male employees or face fines as high as 1 percent of their entire payroll. The law took effect Jan. 1, 2011.
“The threat of a fine is serious and I certainly expect this [requirement] to be on the list of things that URSSAF [France's Social Security revenue collection body] controllers check in their audits,” Devernay said, although she added that she expects the government to be lenient in early 2012 and possibly extend the deadline, as it did with a similar earlier measure.
Alternatively, companies can negotiate gender-equality agreements with their employees or labor unions.
Many large concerns have already completed such agreements or are negotiating them, according to Devernay, while smaller companies are more likely to opt for plans. The law is vague on what plans must contain, however, and Devernay said she expects the government to publish an implementation decree with more details during 2011.
Existing Legal Obligation
The new requirement adds to an existing legal obligation for companies to annually report gender equality conditions in their organizations, such as the proportion of women to men, and actions taken to promote women, such as training and education, Devernay said. Companies with 300 employees or more must include the plan in these annual reports, while companies with fewer employees can include it in their annual results reports. A summary must be posted in the workplace and on the company website and must be made available to employees on request.
The plan should set targets for obtaining gender equality, methods to achieve these targets, and criteria for measuring progress toward these targets.
The requirement to have a gender equality plan is modeled on a measure in the 2008 Social Security financing law (Law 2008-1330 of December 2008) that said companies with 50 employees or more must have action plans for hiring senior citizens, Devernay said.
The seniors measure, implemented by a May 2009 decree (No. 2009-560) and effective Jan. 1, 2010, also gave companies the option of negotiating an agreement with their employees or unions rather than implementing unilateral plans and included a penalty of 1 percent of payroll for noncompliance.
“That law was the only thing that convinced French companies to comply with what the government wanted on the senior hiring plans,” Devernay said, “so I don't think the authorities will hesitate to levy large fines for this new requirement.”
No Requirement for Results
Another similarity with the senior hiring plan is that the new requirement on gender equality planning includes no obligation for employers to actually achieve the goals established in their plans, Devernay said.
“Just like with seniors, this law sets an obligation to make the plan, but not for achieving results,” according to Devernay. “After a year of the senior plan requirement, the results are not very clear. The action plans are not always followed by real action,” although the government has hinted it may soon act to require companies to show progress on senior hiring.
Citing experience with the senior hiring plan requirement, Devernay said she expects many companies to wait until year's end to create their plans and that some will even wait into 2012.
“For the senior plan, the government was tolerant when it became clear companies were not ready,” Devernay said. “They even extended the deadline from Jan. 1 to April 1, 2010,” and she expects similar flexibility early on for the new obligation.
Report on Gender Gap
According to a July 2009 French government report, Preparatory Report for Labor Talks on the Equality of Men and Women in the Workplace, France has made progress on gender equality in the last half of the 20th century but still has a ways to go.
The report inventoried inequalities in salary, recruitment, and career opportunities, finding that women accounted for 47 percent of the French labor market in 2009, up from 34 percent in 1960, although on average women earn 25 percent less than men do.
According to France's statistics bureau (INSEE), 10 of 86 professions in France have achieved gender equality. While the secretarial profession is 98 percent female, the teaching profession about 70 percent, the legal profession 57 percent, and the medical profession 59 percent, for example, only 11 percent of construction workers and 5 percent of metal workers are female, INSEE found.
(Appeared Feb. 23, 2011)
