Adopted at first reading by the Senate on Wednesday April 5, the bill aimed at strengthening women’s access to responsibilities in the public service is the legislative outcome of the work of the women’s rights delegation carried out in 2022 on the ten-year application report of the 2012 Sauvadet law, which imposes quotas on public employers for first female appointments in 6,000 senior management and management positions.
Tabled by senators Annick Billon, president of the delegation, Martine Filleul and Dominique Vérien, members of the delegation, this bill is the legislative translation of the recommendations of the report of Mmes Filleul and Vérien of June 2022 entitled Parity in the senior civil service: changing gear ten years following the Sauvadet law. These recommendations aimed to strengthen women’s access to responsibilities in the senior civil service, by extending joint obligations and by strengthening the mobilization of public employers around an ambitious professional and wage equality policy.
The bill adopted by the Senate, amended by the rapporteur of the law commission, Françoise Dumont, presents three major advances compared to the current legislation:
- the strengthening of the requirement of “flow” quotas in raising, from 40% to 45%, the minimum number of people of each sex for “primo-nominations” senior and managerial positions in the three sections of the public service;
- the introduction of a “stock” quota with the establishment, from 2029, of a minimum rate of 40% of persons of each sex present in senior and managerial positions in the public service ;
- the publication of indicators relating to the differences in remuneration and representation in senior and managerial positions between women and men, i.e. the establishment of a index of professional equality in the public serviceaccompanied by the possibility of financial sanctions made public.
Today, women still occupy only a third of positions of responsibility within the civil service, even though they represent almost two thirds of the workforce. To put an end to this imbalance, a new legislative stage was necessary. The Senate Women’s Rights Delegation welcomes the adoption of this bill which, by establishing new obligations for public employers, will strengthen their exemplary equality and contribute to breaking the persistent glass ceiling in the senior civil service. She now wants this text to be quickly debated in the National Assembly with a view to its final adoption.