negligent companies soon deprived of public contracts

The Prime Minister takes as a reference the Pénicaud index, introduced by law in 2019. This index of professional parity between women and men – named after its author, the former Minister of Labor Muriel Pénicaud – makes it possible to measure the wage inequalities within companies with more than fifty employees in the private sector. Observation drawn up today by Matignon: the parity objective is far from being achieved, hence this desire to go further and to constrain refractory companies.

Any company that does not provide the necessary information on gender equality, or that obtains a poor score on the Pénicaud index, will be excluded from public procurement competition by the end of Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term. This novelty will be integrated into the gender equality plan to be presented on Wednesday March 8 on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day. This is the implementation of what is called the principle of equal conditionality.

Objective: to change business practices

The principle consists in linking all state aid, including subsidies, to the fact that companies present an exemplary balance sheet. In the long version of the interview, published on the magazine’s website SheElisabeth Borne gives the spirit of the measure but does not go into all the technical details.

Asked about this last point, the services of the Prime Minister specified that companies subject to the index (those with more than 50 employees) that will have a score lower than 75, on a scale of 100, or that will simply not have answered the questionnaire. The dates of application by the end of the five-year term in 2027 remain to be specified and Elisabeth Borne insists: the primary objective is not the sanction but that companies change their practices to achieve real equality between women and men. men.