Equality bargaining "colonized" by market feminism? Gender and class conflicts at workplace level in France - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Equality bargaining "colonized" by market feminism? Gender and class conflicts at workplace level in France

Susan Milner
  • Fonction : Auteur
  • PersonId : 1227801
Sophie Pochic

Résumé

France like other European countries has seen the shift towards "market feminism" (Kantola, Squires, 2012) but this approach remains highly controversial in academic and activist circles. Market feminism is perhaps most obviously seen in women’s business networks, of which around 450 were counted in 2016. In large companies, human resource managers or diversity managers, often white upper-class female, have invested in actions aimed at supporting women managers, working in tandem with consultants on the growing "market for equality" (Blanchard, 2013). Market feminists have also lobbied successfully for the imposition of quotas for women on supervisory boards (20% from 2014, increasing to 40% in 2017). Meanwhile employer duties to report on equality actions and (in companies with 50 employees or more) to engage in collective bargaining on gender equality grew more complex and stringent after 2010, pushed by the EU agenda to tackle the gender pay gap (Gregory, Milner, 2012). This paper examines the growing influence of market feminism in France through the CSR policies of large companies. We base our analysis on a text-based study of nearly 200 equality agreements and plans (submitted in 2014-15) which was complemented with in-depth case study of twenty companies selected from this sample. The case studies comprise interviews with trade union delegates where they signed agreements, with human resource managers where they were willing to take part, and with other organisational actors such as high-level equality champions. The interviews provided rich data on the origins and motivating factors of agreements or plans, process of bargaining, and follow-up through specific actions and measurement of progress towards targets. The focus of this paper is the discursive framing of equality and diversity management as market feminism, analyzed with an intersectional approach. We are interested in what relationship exists between CSR policies (designed by employers with external stakeholders) and equality bargaining (constrained by labour law and negotiated with employees' representatives). This applies also to the way in which ‘work-family’ organizational measures are conceived and applied within those companies. For example, who has access to company creches? Which groups of men are targeted by paternity leave? How do the discourse, objectives, indicators, and policies define the legitimate population ? The discourse of the business case and women leaders is most present in multinational companies exposed to stock markets and CSR rating, and imposes its priorities on equality bargaining. Actions aimed at managerial women (mentoring, coaching, networks) bring potential internal benefits in the form of awareness-raising and legitimation of women's voice and parents' constraints. But they also create the risk of an ‘elitist (and exclusive) equality’ agenda (Özbilgin et al., 2011; Jacquemart et al. 2016), and of relative disempowerment of trade unions with a more critical voice on corporate strategies and with a wider agenda on equality. For example, equal pay or sexual harassment are contentious issues, pushed more by trade unionists than by women's networks or diversity managers. As Cynthia Cockburn (1989) argues, actions aimed at women managers may constitute a short-term agenda which renders invisible the challenges faced by lower-paid women in lower-level jobs, often from minority ethnic groups, such as insecurity or poor working conditions. By contrast, the absence of market feminists in small companies, the low-level of awareness or unfavorable power position of trade union delegates usually create only symbolic or patronizing actions. This paper concludes on the potentials and pitfalls of an equality bargaining colonized by moderate (white, heterosexual and bourgeois) feminism.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-03992124 , version 1 (16-02-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-03992124 , version 1

Citer

Susan Milner, Sophie Pochic. Equality bargaining "colonized" by market feminism? Gender and class conflicts at workplace level in France. Gender, Work and Organization. 10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference, Gender, Work and Organization, Jun 2018, Sydney (AUSTRALIA), Australia. ⟨hal-03992124⟩
27 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Mastodon Facebook X LinkedIn More