29%: all working hours combined, men earned on average, in 2019, 29% more than women, and 17% more in full-time equivalent (i.e. the salary converted to full-time throughout the year , regardless of the actual volume of work). Between both sexes, the glass ceiling continues to be a reality in the workplace.
This is what economists Vanessa di Paola and Stéphanie Moullet highlight in their contribution to the scientific mediation project “What do we know about work? », from the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for the Evaluation of Public Policies (Liepp), distributed in collaboration with the Liepp and the Presses de Sciences Po on the Emploi channel Lemonde.fr.
After a historical reminder of the main legislative advances to promote equality between women and men (principle “for work of equal value, equal pay” in 1972, professional equality index in 2019, Rixain law in 2021), the authors list the figures recent studies which prove the persistence of differences in salary and the nature of the positions held: women more often than men occupy low- or unskilled jobs (23% are employees or unskilled workers, compared to 14% of men); more than one in two people (54%) in a limited-term job (CDD, temporary) are women; 28% of women work part-time in France compared to only 8% of men.
This glass ceiling, defined as “all the visible and invisible obstacles that separate women from the top of professional and organizational hierarchies”, is primarily due to educational orientations, which clearly influence career paths. Although women today have a higher level of diploma than men, they are still rare in engineering schools, and more present in less remunerative sectors.
A symbolic tipping point
To this is added a “vertical segregation”, more worrying: for the same position, the gap in remuneration and responsibilities remains. Among executives, for example, women have less access to hierarchical responsibilities than men (35% versus 43%). “They have a 30% lower probability of exercising hierarchical responsibility than men”write the researchers.
The latter explain that the persistence of gender stereotypes and norms justifies these patterns: despite improvements, the management function is still strongly associated with the masculine gender, deemed more authoritarian.
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