Jacqueline Laufer

From Equality to Reconciliation in France

When the European Economic Community (EEC) was established in 1957, France was responsible for the inclusion of Article 119 on equal pay between women and men within the social policy section of the founding treaty. Unlike other EEC countries, France had ratified the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention no. 100, ‘concerning equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value’. The French, therefore, argued the case not on the grounds that provision for equal pay was necessary to promote social integration, but rather because it would prevent unfair economic competition. Unlike the ILO convention, Article 119 in the Treaty of Rome did not, however, refer to work of ‘equal value’, and the interpretation given to Article 119 by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) after 1976 revealed the gap that existed between the paternalistic conception of equal rights observed by the French and the approach adopted by the EEC.