From the nation that afflicted women with Roger Vadim, this:

CHIRAC PROMISES WOMEN EQUAL PAY
CRITICS DOUBT WILLINGNESS TO END WAGE GAP

The French leader promised tough measures after it was revealed that in some sectors, women were earning one third less than male colleagues doing the same job.

"Over the last year, I have called for negotiations on the equality between men and women in the workplace," he said. "An agreement that established interesting principles and objectives was drawn up. Now we all have to go much further."

But he was characteristically vague on how equality could be achieved, promising only to "invent new ways" of bringing it about.

Classic Jack. Another inspiring wand wave: Pay Inequality, BE GONE! Shoo. Shoo. Jack's promising is something of an annual sop. Last year on Women's Day [!] the Chirac government unveiled a Charter of Equality Between Men and Women, which enumerated approximately 300 concrete actions to be undertaken by government, businesses, and other organizations to achieve parity. Perhaps another 600 concrete actions will do the trick. Then again, Jack could just enforce standing law.

Yvette Roudy, a former women's rights minister for the Socialist party, dismissed the president's announcement as a gimmick. "These laws exist already. All Jacques Chirac has to do is to apply them," she said.

A report by a parliamentary group published in December confirmed that a series of workplace equality laws introduced since 1972 had failed to eliminate persistent inequalities both in promotion and pay.

It said legislation introduced by the Socialist government in 2001, requiring companies to negotiate on equal pay, had been almost completely ignored: "Seventy-two per cent of companies have never organised specific talks on professional equality."

"Of course, when Jacques Chirac says we have to save the planet, do away with inequality and wipe out discrimination, we totally agree," [Socialist party economic spokesman, Eric Besson,] told Le Monde. "But as usual, there's a vast different between this and his acts. The social programme of this government is one big deception."

The Socialist opposition isn't alone in thinking Jack's mush only opportunistic pandering.

If parity were ever achieved between men and women's pay, it would be a "veritable social revolution", conceded Le Monde in an editorial. The workplace has become increasingly "feminised" over the years, the paper noted, with women now constituting 47% of the workforce. But women still have less job security than men and their salaries are, "on average, 20% to 27% lower". The plight of working women is not only confined to pay, it argued. Women also needed to be encouraged to take on higher-level jobs and to return to work after having children.

In France having children and raising a family is not real work. It is not a real profession. It has no economic worth. It's something women do until they can hire a housekeeper and their husbands can maintain a mistress.

Writing in Libération, Cécile Daumas agreed. If the government really wanted to help, it should start in the classroom, "and tell girls they can become engineers" just as easily as boys. [This is a favorite liberal saw, but by no means certain science, neither physiological and definitely not social.] Women should also be given "proper career structures to enable them to attain top business jobs". Perhaps President Jacques Chirac could even persuade those "big company bosses" among his friends to move aside and "give up their place for some talented women", Daumas suggested. [Surely, M. Daumas, you jest. Or perhaps you are starting your drinking day with the petit déjeuner.]

The bill is unlikely to work, complained Olivier Picard in Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace. France already had laws, some dating back to 1972, which were supposed to end "salary inequality". These were regularly flouted, however, and the latest measure only served "to multiply legislation in order to mask the inability to bring proper reform", Picard concluded.

There are few nations -- none spring to mind -- that have exemplary records in according women equal rights. And France is far from the top of the list of the worst offenders. But she comes in for special censure as a modern western nation, promoting the abstract of universal equality but applying it timidly and selectively.

Women never gained full political rights during the French Revolution; none of the national assemblies ever considered legislation granting political rights to women (they could neither vote nor hold office). Most deputies thought the very idea outlandish.

The boldest statement for women's political rights came from the pen of Marie Gouze (1748–93), who wrote under the pen name Olympe de Gouges. An aspiring playwright, Gouges bitterly attacked slavery and in September 1791 published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, modeled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Following the structure and language of the latter declaration, she showed how women had been excluded from its promises. Although her declaration did not garner widespread support, it did make her notorious. Like many of the other leading female activists, she eventually suffered persecution at the hands of the government; while Etta Palm d'Aelders and most of the others only had to endure arrest, however, Gouges went to the guillotine in 1793 [for speaking out in support of King Louis XVI]. Public political activism came at a high price.

At least women enjoyed equal access to the guillotine.

The enlightment boy's club of France finally got around to granting French women the right to vote on April 21, 1944, though other curtailments survived into the 1960s. France beat out Guatemala (1946), came in right behind Bulgaria (1944), but trailed Mynamar (1935), Mongolia (1924), Lithuania (1921), and the United States (1920).

Back to this canard. These statistics, just like the ones used in the US, compare total earnings across all professions. It makes as much sense as comparing the marathon times of all women compared to men as a group. If women in the identical positions as men did in fact earn (pick your number) cents on the dollar, what profit-driven company would ever hire a man?

M. Paul,

The post is not meant to advocate for government mandated parity. Rather we hoped to mock Jack's handling of the perceived injustice: Committees, reports, hand-wringing, then nothing. But then nothing needs be done but to enforce standing French labor law. What Jack here promises in the coming year is much the same what Jack promised last year. And Jack will undoubtedly deliver more of the same nothing this year.

That said, France has one of the worse records on woman's rights in the West. The rest of the post touches on this.

We agree that the marketplace best sorts this sort of thing out and is the best guarantor of fair compensation.

Regards.
DGB