Social partners and equality bargaining in France: a blunt tool for reducing gender pay gaps

The gender pay gap in France has proved particularly persistent, whereas it has narrowed in many other European countries over the last decade. The intractability of gender pay inequality and wider workplace disparities raises questions about the efficacy of collective bargaining as a policy solution, since it has been the major tool for government intervention since 1983. Successive governments extended the scope of equality bargaining and introduced harder sanctions after 2012. In this chapter we seek to explain why equality bargaining has failed to make headway in tackling gender pay gaps in France, despite this high level of policy attention. Policy fails to address the weaknesses of collective bargaining as a regulatory tool, and gives insufficient attention to transparency, leaving significant discretion in the formulation of published indicators. Our analysis also shows the institutional and judicial obstacles to promoting an intersectional approach to gender equality in France.