Rating companies on their respect for parity between women and men was the idea of the professional equality index created in 2018. The government hoped to fight against discrimination, while women always win on average 15% less than men equal working time. “ We are going to be vigorous and uncompromising”assured the Minister of Labor, Muriel Pénicaud.
Six years later, the rating system did see the light of day, but its implementation was much less proactive than announced. While thousands of companies do not fulfill their reporting obligations or report blatant inequalities between their employees, sanctions are almost non-existent, according to the investigation by the World.
An abandonment of “name and shame”
Emmanuel Macron’s promise in 2017, the professional equality index is based on the philosophy of “name and shame”: “name and shame” unequal companies and distinguish them from the most virtuous ones. With this information made public, women could consult company ratings before applying.
The government followed this logic initially, publishing in 2020 a list of “bad students” of equal pay. But since then, nothing, or almost nothing. Indexes are still made public each year on the website of the Ministry of Laborbut no aggregated list makes it possible to know which ones would not have complied or would penalize women.
More than one in five companies in default
However, according to the data obtained and aggregated by The world, the index remains ignored by thousands of companies in France. A fifth (21%) of subject companies have not posted their professional equality report online for the year 2023, although they had until 1er March 2024 to do so. And 3,110 companies (7% of the total) have never published a single balance sheet.
While most non-declarations concern small businesses, some large groups continue to drag their feet. This is the case of the publisher Webedia (AlloCiné, Jeuxvideo.com, Puremédias, etc.), which has not put online his first index only a few hours after being requested by The world.
No less than 106 other large companies (more than 250 employees) have never complied with this reporting obligation since 2019. These are, for example, the school support company Domicours Individual, the company France Restauration Rapide (which owns the Patàpain bakeries) or the Asian grocery chain Tang Frères. If the first two did not follow up, the third admits not having “not worked well to meet this index as required”while ensuring that there is no “no worries about gender equality” in the business. Christophe Polini, the company’s general secretary, says he has not ” Never “ been requested or given formal notice by the services of the Ministry of Labor on this issue and deplores that this new reporting obligation is added to “an already phenomenal amount of constraints for businesses”.
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