On May 10, 2023, following some final arbitrations in the Strasbourg Parliament, Directive 2023/970 was published in the Official Journal of the European Union with the aim of “strengthening the application of the principle of equal pay between women and men for the same work or work of equal value through the transparency of pay and the mechanisms for applying the law”.
Like the other Member States, France had until June 7 of this year to transpose the provisions of this directive into the labor code. Given that we are still only consulting the social partners, this deadline has obviously not been respected.
Given the need to then have a bill adopted in the Council of Ministers and then to give deputies and senators time to legislate, it will probably be necessary to wait at least until the beginning of 2027 for promulgation, hoping moreover that, thereafter, the inevitable implementing decrees will be established without delay.
If France is by far not the only European country to have fallen behind in transposition – only two States of the Union, Slovakia and Italy, have done so so far – its wait-and-see attitude on such an important social issue does not fail to shock.
Lack of interest in professional gender equality
Certainly, the situation can be explained by ministerial instability: with Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, Catherine Vautrin then Jean-Pierre Farandou, our country has had three different labor ministers since the dissolution of the National Assembly. Unfortunately, this also undoubtedly reveals a lack of interest in professional equality between women and men, even though gender-related injustices continue to exist in the world of work.
There is nothing eccentric about the European Union’s initiative. Across all Member States, in 2020 it was estimated that women earned, on average, 13% less than men. In France, published studies never give perfectly identical results, but the interprofessional consensus established by INSEE meant that in 2024, women earned, on average and for equivalent working hours, 14% less than their male colleagues. For the same job in the same establishment, the salary gap was reduced to 3.6%.
Women being more present in part-time jobs, however, the real pay gap was almost 22%. The standard of living of women therefore remains significantly lower than that of men not only during working life, but also once they retire.
Opacity of salary practices
European institutions consider that professional inequalities are mainly caused by the opacity of salary policies in companies and in public services. Also, the most radical solution consists of requiring communication on remuneration within staff representative institutions, then with all employees.
The preamble to the directive of May 10, 2023 thus states, in paragraph 16: “A general lack of transparency with regard to remuneration levels within organizations maintains a situation in which discrimination in remuneration based on sex and gender bias can go unnoticed or, when suspected, be difficult to prove. »
The text adds that “binding measures are therefore necessary to improve the transparency of remuneration, encourage organizations to review their remuneration structures in order to guarantee equal remuneration between women and men performing the same work or work of the same value”.
Faced with the “restrictive measures” that are coming, our social partners seem to have some reservations. The reluctance of employers’ organizations is hardly surprising since the requirements of the directive will complicate the management of human resources and cause social tensions, even as companies face a destabilizing international economic environment.
The ambiguity of trade union confederations
The hesitations of the union confederations are more surprising because professional equality has been, in recent years, one of their main demands. The appointments of women at the head of the two most important French union forces – Marylise Léon at the CFDT and Sophie Binet at the CGT – are also indicative of the desire to promote diversity and fight against sexist discrimination.
The confederations, however, fear that, in order to be able to finance the compensation of unjustifiable inequalities, companies will restrict as much as possible the budgets planned for the next general increases. Given the increase in energy supply costs linked to the price of oil, it is becoming crucial to contain wage bills in many sectors of activity.
Beyond everyone’s procrastination, the importance of transparency and equal pay must not be neglected. In a country where, since a famous declaration of August 26, 1789, citizens are supposed to be “free and equal before the law” (the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Editor’s note), it is high time to finally enforce the adage “equal pay for equal work”. The persistence of significant gaps in income levels between women and men is obviously no longer acceptable.
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