As of Monday, 10 November, women in France are working for free through the end of the year, according to an annual report that uses the exact day and time that men start being paid more than women, based on salary statistics, which show the gender pay gap is narrowing slightly, but not quickly.
As of Monday at precisely 11:31 am, women in France began working “for free”, and will continue to do so until the end of the year, according to the feminist newsletter Les Glorieuses, which determines this date and time using data on pay disparities between men and women.
Women's pay
For the same working hours, women earn on average 14.2 percent less than men, according to the latest figures available from the Insee National statistics institute, from 2023 data.
The gender pay gap in France has narrowed since 2016, from 15.1 percent to 14.2 percent. Last year, the symbolic date was 8 November at 4:48pm, in 2023 it was 6 November, and in 2022 it was 4 November.
But Rebecca Amsellem, author and founder of the newsletter, says it is not enough.
“If we do nothing… at the current pace, pay equality will not be achieved until 2167. This means a wait of 142 more years before women and men earn the same average salary,” she wrote, adding that this was “unacceptable”.
“This is not an abstract symbol, it is a real injustice. We must put an end to it,” Yaël Braun-Pivet, President of the National Assembly, wrote on X about the date.
Part-time jobs
Women are “more often in part-time jobs and are overrepresented in essential sectors, like healthcare, but they are undervalued by our economic and patriarchal standards,” said Greens leader Marine Tondelier, the only woman heading a major political party.
Les Glorieuses advocates for salary increases in female-dominated sectors, like nursing, education, home care aides, and equal parental leave for both parents after a woman has a child.
“Rather than ask women to constantly adapt, our movement would like a transformation of the world of work, for it to take the reality of women’s lives into consideration,” wrote Amesellem, who has said she hopes that a European directive on pay transparency, which will come into force in France next year, will help women negotiate higher salaries.
(with newswires)
