is a professor of management science at the University of Paris-Saclay. Her research focuses on gender equality in the workplace.
Picture © Author’s personal collection
In order for more women to access positions of responsibility, some men will have to give up their place. This means breaking the “glass floor” which maintains men in positions of higher responsibility and income, even when they would prefer to be less invested in the professional sphere.
In December 2021, France’s adoption of a law on Economic and Professional Gender Equality – known as the Rixain law – extended the objective of a balanced representation of men and women to all executive boards. This bill constitutes an important breakthrough for gender equality in the workplace, by setting new compulsory targets for companies, following that of a balanced representation of genders in boards of directors (with the Copé-Zimmermann law of 2011). These two pieces of legislation both help compel companies to make room for women in executive committees, which will mean encouraging more women to lay claim to high-responsibility positions, but also – and this is less spoken about – getting more men to leave them.
Mr Breadwinner, still at the top
The problem is that in spite of a relative evolution since 1990, a large part of the population continues to ascribe domestic responsibilities to women and professional ones to men, whether they want them or not. In 2017, over a third (34.9 %) of Europeans agreed that “it’s the man’s job to earn money, while it’s woman’s job to look after the household and the family,” and almost half of them (47.3 %) agreed that “in general, when a woman has a full-time job, family life suffers as a result.” (cf. the author’s book Gender Stereotypes and Professional Inequality, in French, 2023).
‘The idea that a man’s salary should be the main income of the family remains prominent’
These stereotypes correspond to the model of the male breadwinner who earns enough to support the family. Historically, this was a statistical reality in the 20th century, when it spread first among the middle classes and then among the working classes. But it’s no longer the prevaili
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