France has not traditionally been a place where DEI programmes have taken root because of legal limitations on the collection of racial and ethnic data. Employers are not allowed to factor people’s origins into hiring or promotion decisions.
In France, you cannot really base any official decision on the origin of someone, even just using the concept of race is considered racist and against the law. This is due to the trauma of Vichy’s regime Nazi collaboration but also the popularization of the idea that there is no scientific evidence for human races in the current human population by the famous anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.
We still have DEI policies focusing on gender, disability and on socio-economic background (which does correlate with ethnicity in a lot of places). Of course in a lot of companies it’s mostly for show, but in some it’s done with a sincere will and has real effects.
It may correlate with ethnicity, but the cases when it doesn’t are important too and it makes it a better condition. It’s also better at countering some far right arguments against help programs.
The same applies to gender. No one can mention or have mentioned in a job offer the gender or family situation of the candidate sought. This prohibition applies to any form of advertising related to hiring, regardless of the nature of the proposed employment contract. The offer must therefore be written in such a way that it clearly indicates that it is addressed equally to men and women. For example, “Executive M/F” or “Employee.” For more details, one can refer to the document “Gender Equality in the Workplace.”
However, when belonging to one gender or the other meets an essential and determining professional requirement, and provided that the objective is legitimate and the requirement is proportionate, the above prohibition does not apply. Article R. 1142-1 of the Labor Code thus establishes the list of jobs and professional activities for which belonging to one gender or the other is a determining condition; this list, which is revised periodically, is as follows:
Artists called to interpret either a female role or a male role;
Models tasked with presenting clothing and accessories;
I understand this to mean that job adverts shouldn’t explicitly target DEI hires. That is not, however, the same as not implementing DEI targets in a company.
The intelligent way to implement DEI has always been to interview and identity the top candidates for a role, and then if you have 2 capable and competent candidates and one is a women / minority, they get the job. This law wouldn’t prevent that.
The subtext of “anti-DEI”, though, is that it is not possible to have two competent candidates where one is a woman/minority because conservative Christian English-speaking white men from wealthy families are inherently superior.
No argument from me, I understand why anti-DEI proponents oppose it. Their racism, classism and misogyny is clear.
The point to my comment was simply that the original commenter is incorrect in thinking that not having DEI explicit adverts excludes a business from having DEI targets.
French companies do have to implement “DEI” policies by law. In France, companies have to monitor inequalities between men and women (in hiring opportunities, salary, promotions, autonomy, etc) and implement plans to reduce them (they can’t discriminate on job adverts, but can take other actions). They also have to hire a certain proportion of people with disabilities.
Has it worked well for France? I’ve been arguing that such an approach would work much better for the US.
Using self-identified racial identities for aid programs is too easy to argue is itself racially biased. Even if you can make good contextual arguments that race-based aid is a compensation for race-based oppression, either current or historical, that’s not a winning political position.
Using metrics like generational wealth, income, education is a much easier argument to make, even if in effect it would disproportionately benefit these identity groups.
The primary downside seems to be that administering such a program is more complicated, which means more of the expense goes to overhead, and more people will not get the benefits they could because of the difficulty of navigating a more complex process.
The primary downside seems to be that administering such a program is more complicated, which means more of the expense goes to overhead, and more people will not get the benefits they could because of the difficulty of navigating a more complex process.
Is that so? I’d think the income tax form should tell you those things.
Fwiw, Europeans would look at you funny if you were to ask them to tick Caucasian/Black/Asian/… on random government forms. This data literally doesn’t exist [here] in any consistent way, except [maybe] for criminal suspects.
Yeah but how do you get the information from the IRS into the systems that manage this hypothetical program? How do you get your parents’ and grandparents’ IRS data correlated with your own? What about people who don’t file taxes? The risk is that all that work falls on the applicant. Or if the program administrators do all that work, that’s where the overhead costs come in.
This is something which happens with existing public assistance programs, where so many requirements have been put on the aid application that people give up trying to to prove they made less than X dollars in the last 12 months, or lived in the state for at least 5 years, or have passed a drug screening, and so on. Too often that’s done intentionally to stymie a program, but the phenomenon exists regardless of motivation. The more complicated the program requirement are, the more people will fail to get aid they should, and the more it costs to administer.
Yeah but how do you get the information from the IRS into the systems that manage this hypothetical program?
Quite honestly, there should be various options. I guess IRS could run such a program itself. Alternatively, the US has SSNs as a universal ID and IRS could send over required data organized by SSN.
What about people who don’t file taxes?
I don’t know but that’s probably solvable.
The risk is that all that work falls on the applicant. Or if the program administrators do all that work, that’s where the overhead costs come in.
I am not convinced by that. An administrator-run program with a simple methodology and a good data basis might be a lot more efficient than an application-based program inviting human error and long back-and-forths.
I fail to understand your reasoning, France is less liberal than USA the state is rather strong and they directly tax most salaries upfront of it being paid each month, they know all your property in France as these are all registered.
Generally they monitor your bank account via the bank themselves that are controlled a lot so they know your income and taxes are prefilled in France. Since most of my income is my salary I have basically never filled taxes I just verify and click accept each year.
So yeah it is not difficult for them to implement such programs and it a much more easy and factual data to collect than ‘is this person a minority’
I think it works in some ways, there are tones of people who graduate university every year without having to pay for the diploma and getting money to live on top of that (bourse), based on household revenue. We still have a problem of reproduced inequalities, educated people marry each other and their kids are much more likely to graduate from top schools, but maybe it’s worse in the USA. I don’t hear the conservatives or (populist) far right criticizing this social system, they are more focused on immigration, so I guess the non-ethnicity based public help is good at avoiding this politization.
The interesting part:
In France, you cannot really base any official decision on the origin of someone, even just using the concept of race is considered racist and against the law. This is due to the trauma of Vichy’s regime Nazi collaboration but also the popularization of the idea that there is no scientific evidence for human races in the current human population by the famous anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Didn’t he study jeans?
That’s how he figured out the race thing. Jeans look equally good on all people no matter color or origin!
Nono, he was an anthropologist, he studied genes
Like Wilder and Hackman?
That was his brother, Jimmy “Beans” Levi-Strauss
We still have DEI policies focusing on gender, disability and on socio-economic background (which does correlate with ethnicity in a lot of places). Of course in a lot of companies it’s mostly for show, but in some it’s done with a sincere will and has real effects.
It may correlate with ethnicity, but the cases when it doesn’t are important too and it makes it a better condition. It’s also better at countering some far right arguments against help programs.
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It’s not rocket science. (Although coincidentally we Frenchmen know how to build rockets too)
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The British managed that, though we are more than happy to share with our European cousins.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Shrapnel
He invented the idea of an explosion powered guillotine blade. Perfect for a rocket warhead.
That doesn’t apply to hiring women though, which is also DEI.
It does in general according to this government website. https://travail-emploi.gouv.fr/offre-demploi-et-embauche-les-droits-du-candidat#anchor-navigation-411
Machine translated:
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
I understand this to mean that job adverts shouldn’t explicitly target DEI hires. That is not, however, the same as not implementing DEI targets in a company.
The intelligent way to implement DEI has always been to interview and identity the top candidates for a role, and then if you have 2 capable and competent candidates and one is a women / minority, they get the job. This law wouldn’t prevent that.
The subtext of “anti-DEI”, though, is that it is not possible to have two competent candidates where one is a woman/minority because conservative Christian English-speaking white men from wealthy families are inherently superior.
No argument from me, I understand why anti-DEI proponents oppose it. Their racism, classism and misogyny is clear.
The point to my comment was simply that the original commenter is incorrect in thinking that not having DEI explicit adverts excludes a business from having DEI targets.
French companies do have to implement “DEI” policies by law. In France, companies have to monitor inequalities between men and women (in hiring opportunities, salary, promotions, autonomy, etc) and implement plans to reduce them (they can’t discriminate on job adverts, but can take other actions). They also have to hire a certain proportion of people with disabilities.
Makes sense, thanks for clarifying.
This sounds like Trump’s dream country.
If you think it’s because there’s no help programs for minorities, there are, but it is usually based on the revenue of the household or the district.
Has it worked well for France? I’ve been arguing that such an approach would work much better for the US.
Using self-identified racial identities for aid programs is too easy to argue is itself racially biased. Even if you can make good contextual arguments that race-based aid is a compensation for race-based oppression, either current or historical, that’s not a winning political position.
Using metrics like generational wealth, income, education is a much easier argument to make, even if in effect it would disproportionately benefit these identity groups.
The primary downside seems to be that administering such a program is more complicated, which means more of the expense goes to overhead, and more people will not get the benefits they could because of the difficulty of navigating a more complex process.
Is that so? I’d think the income tax form should tell you those things.
Fwiw, Europeans would look at you funny if you were to ask them to tick Caucasian/Black/Asian/… on random government forms. This data literally doesn’t exist [here] in any consistent way, except [maybe] for criminal suspects.
Yeah but how do you get the information from the IRS into the systems that manage this hypothetical program? How do you get your parents’ and grandparents’ IRS data correlated with your own? What about people who don’t file taxes? The risk is that all that work falls on the applicant. Or if the program administrators do all that work, that’s where the overhead costs come in.
This is something which happens with existing public assistance programs, where so many requirements have been put on the aid application that people give up trying to to prove they made less than X dollars in the last 12 months, or lived in the state for at least 5 years, or have passed a drug screening, and so on. Too often that’s done intentionally to stymie a program, but the phenomenon exists regardless of motivation. The more complicated the program requirement are, the more people will fail to get aid they should, and the more it costs to administer.
Quite honestly, there should be various options. I guess IRS could run such a program itself. Alternatively, the US has SSNs as a universal ID and IRS could send over required data organized by SSN.
I don’t know but that’s probably solvable.
I am not convinced by that. An administrator-run program with a simple methodology and a good data basis might be a lot more efficient than an application-based program inviting human error and long back-and-forths.
I fail to understand your reasoning, France is less liberal than USA the state is rather strong and they directly tax most salaries upfront of it being paid each month, they know all your property in France as these are all registered. Generally they monitor your bank account via the bank themselves that are controlled a lot so they know your income and taxes are prefilled in France. Since most of my income is my salary I have basically never filled taxes I just verify and click accept each year. So yeah it is not difficult for them to implement such programs and it a much more easy and factual data to collect than ‘is this person a minority’
I think it works in some ways, there are tones of people who graduate university every year without having to pay for the diploma and getting money to live on top of that (bourse), based on household revenue. We still have a problem of reproduced inequalities, educated people marry each other and their kids are much more likely to graduate from top schools, but maybe it’s worse in the USA. I don’t hear the conservatives or (populist) far right criticizing this social system, they are more focused on immigration, so I guess the non-ethnicity based public help is good at avoiding this politization.
Right-wingers have decried this system for a while now. They’re convinced it’s designed to hide the fact that brown people commit more crime and such.
Maybe right wingers just like to bitch about everything