The French Ministry of Labour has announced it will publish the 'gender equality index' results of companies with 250 or more employees in March 2021. Previously only results of companies with more than 1,000 employees were published.

The French 'professional future' law (Law no. 2018-771 of 5 September 2018) requires any company with at least 50 employees to calculate its 'gender equality index' using various indicators. Following this calculation, companies that do not obtain a minimum number of points (75 points) must plan corrective measures and, if necessary, put in place financial measures to make up for lost wages. The company has a period of three years to obtain a result of at least 75 points, failing which it is liable to pay a penalty.  

Within this framework, the results of companies with more than 1,000 employees are published on the Ministry of Labour's website. Based on the observation that this approach 'is bearing fruit since 97% of these companies meet their obligations and 4% of them obtained a score below 75/100 (the alert threshold) in 2020, against 19% in 2019,' the Ministry of Labour has indicated in a press release dated 4 November 2020 that the results of the index for companies with more than 250 employees will also be published on its website as of the next index campaign in March 2021. 

In this press release it is also stated that: 

 'a consultation will soon be initiated with the social partners to supplement the index with an additional indicator on the share of women in senior management, with 37% of companies still having fewer than two women among their ten highest paid employees.' 

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