BPW International

A major conference was held in France on June 28 with topics of great significance for working women, such as the division of work and family. The French Minister of Solidarity and Social Cohesion, Ms Roselyne Bachelot was responsible for the initiative of this conference.

Business & Professional Women of France, wish to extend the debate on this important subject, namely the impact of maternity or parental leave , commonly called "family leave", taken at 96% by women, on their departure from the company.

Pressure to resign after maternity leave

The INSEE figures published in February 2011 related to the employment of men and women in 2009 show large differences for reasons of departure between men and women. 11.3% of working women have resigned, against 7.5% of men. And, conversely, 29.5% of men have "benefited" from a dismissal, against 24.9% of women. This means that women are encouraged to resign rather than be fired. We know that dismissal in France is expensive for a company because the minimum legal indemnity to be paid can be extremely high after 2 years of seniority.  Companies attempt to avoid dismissing women and find  a means to push them into resignation. They are confident that women prefer to leave voluntarily when the situation becomes intolerable, in order to quickly move on and secure the future of their family.

Discriminated women rarely dare to go to court

A good example of this problem is the departures of women who leave within the year following their return from “family leave”. In France, the woman is protected as an employee and can not be dismissed during the period of pregnancy, maternity leave and up to 4 weeks after the end of the leave, except for serious misconduct. Four weeks after returning from family leave is short. Still, the employer can use the threat of a serious offense defense argument before the Court, knowing that the only risk may be a reclassification by the Court a few years later. In addition, the woman becomes an employee with no special protection, as the only means of defense, discrimination, is difficult to prove.

Who has not heard the story of a woman, returning from “family leave”, only ended up facing a job with less responsibilities than before, leaving, or worse, a negotiated departure?

However, few women set up proceedings for discrimination, afraid of the consequences of such when looking for a new job and the difficulty to evidence the discrimination. They guess that their claim will be suspected as being without foundation and abusive. However, the Courts appear more favorable to such action. A decision of the Court of Appeal of Paris of May 5, 2010 caused quite a stir last year.  A woman, holding a high position within a multinational French bank, considered herself to have been discriminated against  after returning from a parental leave that lasted 11 years. Nevertheless, the Court granted her substantial benefits and acknowledge that she was discriminated against considering that her wages were not equivalent to those of the men having attended the same eminent French Business School (HEC).

Lack of statistics and inappropriate corporate documents

Many mandatory corporate documents exist to collect data about employment: the social report and the annual compared progress report (RSC) which is used to verify if the conditions of employment and training of men and women are identical. These documents provide information about the number of departures of employees by gender. However, they do not collect accurate statistics on the causes of departure, whether such a departure follows the return from “family leave”, this data is easy to collect and significant. The same applies to breaches of employment agreement during the trial period, another factor of insecurity in female employment.

In addition to that, a 2004 survey by the Senate revealed that only one third of companies in France complied with the legal obligation to achieve the corporate documents relating to labor issues and to release it to labor unions. Also there is no control by the labor authority of the data included in these reports.

Therefore, the organization, Business & Professional Women (BPW) made the following proposals to the French government :

• coercive means of control on these corporate documents to make them fully effective, and
• that companies collect and include this essential information about women and men leaving the company within the year after the end of their “family leave” and the mode of departure (dismissal or resignation).

The aim is to protect all parents, men and women, who do not wish to be punished for being parents and employees.

Translation BPW France, from Rue 89, July 2011