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.
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.
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.
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!
That was his brother, Jimmy “Beans” Levi-Strauss
Nono, he was an anthropologist, he studied genes
Like Wilder and Hackman?
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.
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.
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