Paris town hall fined €90k for appointing too many women to senior positions

[miri1985]

www.euronews.com/2020/12/15/paris-fined-90-000-for-breaching-gender-parity-law-by-appointing-too-many-women-in-senior-

"This fine is obviously absurd. What's more, it is unfair, irresponsible and dangerous," Hidalgo, who has been at the helm of the French capital since 2014, told the city council on Monday.

"We must promote women with determination and vigour because the gap everywhere in France is still very large. So yes, in order to achieve parity one day, it is necessary to speed up the tempo and make sure that in the nominations there are more women than men," she added.

She also said that she would bring the cheque to the ministry herself, flanked by her female deputies and senior staff."

Well, yes, if you are going to have a gender party law, it is going to limit you. Possibly it wasn't a great idea in the first place.

This is the problem with trying to fight oppression with calls for equality. What oppressed classes need is liberation, not some tool that is equally available to the oppressor, because pretty inevitably, those with power will gain more from equally accessible tools than those without power.

Sounds like the right decision to me.

Women and men make up roughly 50-50 of the population and the argument is that public bodies and institutions should reflect this ratio more broadly since historically women have been severely underrepresented.

The French law says no more than 60% of either gender and there were 69% women. So of course this should be rectified.

You can't have it both ways. If you want a fair representation of the demographic in public bodies and institutions, then sectors being 'dominated' by women should be frowned upon just as if it was 'dominated' by men.

Does anyone know how this rule works? Does it only apply to new appointments? Or are all other similar positions now within the 60-40 bounds?

I am just surprised (and impresssed) if women make up roughly 50% of the senior positions.

Seems a good decision. I want gender equality. I don't want preferential treatment because of my gender. I can jolly well achieve what I want without it looking like I am a benefactor of positive discrimination.

The whole thing is ridiculous! That part of the law was repealed, this is a retrospective fine!

Then again, it is the end game of positie diiscrimination laws. And again Franced show us the way not to do it... in matters civil

Sorry for reposting this above - (I admit I was surprised I thought I couldn't find a post for it).

The inequity in this case is not the fine that has been issued to the town hall, but, every single fine that hasn't been issued to all the companies and institutions that have a >60% male workforce.

If that happened, as I assume the intention of the law was to be, then there may be some actual moves towards parity.

Sounds like the rules were badly written.
No more than 60% of new appointments should go to one sex.
Seems fair enough right?
But if there is an existing gender imbalance, how do you rectify it unless you recruit one more than the other?
It should have been "no more than 60%, unless there is a gender imbalance which needs to be addressed".

Is the ruling a strict percentage, does it take into account the total number of posts? What if there are 9 posts in total?
The fewer the posts the less a percentage makes sense, you can't have half a person.

I’m reminded of a quote by the Notorious RBG:

“When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.”

This story illustrates that the good intent of positive discrimination laws have indeed paved the road to hell.

It’s time for a more rigorous, material based analysis of inequality of opportunity, rather than responding to echoes of inequality of outcome from previous times.

I've found that the emphasis on equality often works the wrong way, or at least more men seem to be motivated to use equality law to their advantage than women do. I work in an area where most of the workforce are women and women are usually well represented in the management tiers. As with primary school teaching, given that there are fewer men starting out, there are still plenty of male senior managers. In one relatively small organisation I worked in all the senior managers and most of the middle managers were female. Most of the women tended to stay in post longer and get salary increments and additional holiday entitlement after a few years. After pressure from some new recruits (male!) there was a review of salaries and the outcome was that the newer members of staff and men in less senior roles were given pay increases so that they were paid the same as longer serving and more experienced women. It was quite bizarre, but HR seemed to be genuinely convinced that we were discriminating against men if we didn't do it.