France Tries Again to Give Women Equal Pay

[chlamor]

France tries again to give women equal pay

Jon Henley in Paris
Wednesday May 11, 2005
The Guardian

The French national assembly launched a campaign yesterday to raise pay for women, who despite laws dating back to the early 1970s still earn on average 25% less than their male counterparts.

"This gulf is unacceptable morally and it is unacceptable economically," the state secretary for equality, Nicole Ameline, told parliament and her 24 fellow European women's rights ministers, who were invited for the occasion.

Ms Ameline said her bill, which aims to achieve wage parity within five years, was "modern" in that it would rely on cooperation with employers rather than coercion. Critics said it was toothless, and did not address the real issues of low pay for women such as part-time working.

<snip>

Today women make up 57% of the French workforce, compared with 30% in the 1960s, but only 14% of company bosses and 35% of managers. However, more than 75% of part-time workers are women, as are nearly 90% of the 3.4 million workers in France earning less than £6,000 a year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1480929,00.html

[FizzFuzz]

1. I hope they pass it!

Wouldn't that give the pukes here something else to hate France for?

They're treatin their wimmins like human beings! Well those damn Frenchies it figures Don't they know wimminses are supposed to go to college to find a man, then drop their career and start filling the house with 4 or 7 or 15 pattering little feet? They sure better not be competing for the MENS's jobs.

Actually, I see alot of women who have, in my opinion, shot themselves in the foot by dropping a fledgeling career to have babies. Many middle aged women I meet who went this route are now in jobs way below their capacity, clerk, secretarial especially, and they are struggling financially. They often seem quite sad about their lot in life. Women and their rush to childbearing as well as the ghettoization of "women's work"--these low paying roles have always been the backbone of exploitative patriarchal societies.

This is why I am thrilled to see many more young women in tough, technical majors in college now...I hope they will be able to bring a new breath of life into these lucrative fields. Laws establishing pay equity would be wonderful too, since women who aren't electronics or engineering geniuses deserve to be able to support a family (or how about themselves? ) too.

[Demonaut]

2. when women work only 75 percent as much as men then I call that equal

pay!


























jus kidding:o

[Voltaire99]

3. "...'modern' in relying on cooperation w/employers rather than coercion"

That's not "modern."

That's "meaningless."

[Frederik]

4. Yeah, isnt it?

If it's servile to business interests it's supposedly "modern". You hear that rhetoric all the time. If you're critical of business interests you're old-fashioned or "using the rhetoric of the 60s".

[Voltaire99]

5. Exactly.

Cf. today's item on the right-center New Democrat think tank, consecrated to producing "winning" candidates.

No more dated rhetoric! Just crawling on our bellies as we mumble GOP pieties, from now on. You win some, you...

[chlamor]

6. Modernity

Capitulate. All else is quaint.

[Voltaire99]

7. Love that advertisement.

No less true today.

And apropos of our new "New Democrat" think tank, perhaps we should add a fifth circle to this vertical hell:

"We Think For You." ;-)

[mainer]

8. "Women make up 57% of the French workforce"?!!

So more women are employed than men? I just hope that French men are doing the housework, then.