Women “work for free” from Wednesday at 9:22 am due to wage inequalities, according to a feminist collective

Women start to “work for free” Wednesday at 9:22 a.m. because of persistent wage inequalities, according to the feminist newsletter “Les Glorieuses”. This symbolic date and time were calculated, as every year since 2015, from European statistics on the pay gap between women and men in France. This year, the difference reached 16.5%, against 15.5% last year.

“Wage inequality is widening”, deplores in a press release the economist Rebecca Amsellem, founder of the “Glorieuses”, for whom “Concrete measures must be put in place as of today in order to avoid waiting until 2234 to see the birth of equal pay”. In a series of proposals, submitted to the candidates for the presidential election of 2022, the “Glorious” demand that the access of companies to subsidies and public contracts be conditioned on progress in this area.

It is also important to “revalue the wages of jobs where women are the most numerous”, nurses and midwives, for example, insist the “Glorieuses”, who also plead for paternity leave to last as long as maternity leave. “Yes, equality costs money”, observed Rebecca Amsellem, but “It is the same to save the aviation industry. And it is a choice that the government is able to make for its citizens”.