French women earn on average 21.8% less than men outside public employment, according to the latest figures dating from 2024 and revealed Thursday by the national statistics institute, a few months before the deadline to transpose a European directive on the subject.
In the private sector, women earned on average 21.8% less than men and this gap has only narrowed by 0.4 points in 2024, compared to 0.9 points per year on average from 2019 to 2023, according to the National Institute of Statistics (Insee).
At this rate, it would take 54.5 years before this average gap is completely absorbed.
This inequality is therefore reducing less quickly than before, even if we must put this slowdown into perspective over the long period. Thus between 1995 and 2001, the wage income of French women was still around 34% lower than that of men.
For 2024, this income amounts to 22,060 euros for women, compared to 28,220 euros for men, a difference of more than 6,000 euros.
This difference is largely due to the part-time work more often done by women and the fact that they work in less remunerative jobs.
The net salary gap in full-time equivalent “for comparable employment” is thus estimated by the institute at 3.6%. A gap which remains despite a 1972 law which establishes the principle of equal remuneration for “work of equal value”.
The European directive on salary transparency, which France must in principle transpose by June 7 at the latest, aims in particular to strengthen this principle of equality.
Under this directive, job applicants will need to receive information on starting pay, or at least its range, and those in office will be able to access “sex-disaggregated” information on the average pay levels of people doing the same work as them or “work of equal value”. Companies will have to justify or remedy pay gaps greater than 5%.
In Europe, according to the latest available data from Eurostat which dates from 2023 and is based on a calculation other than that of INSEE, the gross hourly wage of women was 12% lower than that of men.
This figure, calculated on other bases – it takes into account in particular the public sector – was 12.2% for France. The four countries where this gap was largest were Latvia (19%), Austria (18.3%), Czech Republic (18%) and Hungary (17.6%). Germany was fifth.
