Women remain significantly underrepresented senior posts within the French civil service, despite the fact that they by far outnumber men in the total payroll of the country’s public services.
According to the latest official figures, by December 31st 2012, 61% of all public service employees were women. Yet in 2013, of the 1,250 appointments to senior posts in the French civil service, which included department directors, ambassadors, rectors and prefects, just 361 - or 29% - were women.
While that figure rose in 2014 to 31%, the government’s “balanced nominations” programme, the name given to a policy to promote gender equality in senior public sector posts, still faces a huge challenge.
The programme, introduced by law in January 2013 by then-women’s rights minister (now education minister) Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, stipulated that at least 20% of all those appointed for the first time to a senior public service position must be from the same gender group, a legalistic description that in practice concerns women. That proportion is to rise to 30% in 2015 and on to 40% in 2017.
The programme concerns only first-time appointments, and not the total number of appointments which include those who move between senior positions.
In its first year of application, the target was more than met, with the proportion of women among first-time appointments to senior roles representing 33%. The results for 2014 will be released in an official report this autumn.
Meanwhile, the backdrop figures reveal the immense task that lies ahead: according to the latest official audit, in 2012 just 16 out of the total 127 prefects in France (senior central government administrators posted to the country’s départements – equivalent to counties - and regions) were women. Of France’s 193 ambassadors, just 30 were women, while all 11 general secretaries of government ministries (the most senior civil servant positions within a ministry) were men.
During the last government cabinet meeting before the summer recess, on July 31st, three new measures to encourage gender parity in public bodies were adopted in parallel to the “balanced nominations” programme.
One of these concerns the appointment of women to quasi-independent public institutions, out of which 19 are now required to ensure a 50-50 gender parity on their management boards, to be reached by introducing a strict parity for every new appointment. Among the institutions concerned are the national commission for the protection of data privacy, the CNIL, whose management currently has 11 men and six women, and the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), whose five commissioners – the members of its policy-defining Commission – include just one woman. As for the management committee of the agency to police doping practice in sports, the AFLD, not a single woman is present. An exception is the French broadcasting regulator, the CSA, which now has perfect parity on its eight-strong management board (see the carefully staged photo below, where the men members stand behind their seated women colleagues).
The second measure adopted at the July 31st cabinet meeting aims to introduce greater gender parity among the governing councils of regulatory professional bodies, such as those regulating the activities of doctors, dentists, architects, chemists and lawyers. This is to be achieved by a new system of strict gender parity among candidates standing for election to the regional and national councils of the bodies.
According to the French social affairs ministry, women represent 42% of France’s doctors, and yet account for just 6% of members of the high council of the National Order of Doctors. Similarly, 42% of dental surgeons practicing in France are women, yet they represent only 16% of members of the profession’s regulatory board’s at both a regional and national level. The ministry also reports that while a majority of lawyers in France are women (53%), just 29% of members of the national council of bar associations are women.
The third measure concerns a move to encourage gender parity among board members of mutual insurance companies (which by law are owned by their policyholders). These are decided by elections, also held at a regional and national level, and mutual companies are required to impose a minimum 40% representation of either gender in elections held as of 2021 (and as of 2024 in the case of those companies which currently have a gender imbalance among their members of one to five or less).
But while the government’s drive towards parity provides a clear signal for change, the task of reforming deep-rooted practices of male domination promises to be a lengthy one, as witnessed by the introduction for the first time of gender parity in local elections held earlier this year. Under the new legislation, party lists of candidates for the councils of France’s 101 départements were required to comprise exactly equal numbers of women and men, ensuring that each council now has strict gender parity. However, less than 10% of all French départements are headed by women.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse