Guide on Gender Equality in the Workplace



Students of the National Institute of Territorial studies (INET) in France have elaborated a guide with examples on how local and regional authorities can act to improve gender equality in the workplace.

 

The guide focuses on local and regional authorities as employers and covers both broad examples on how to raise general awareness as well as concrete measures on how to ameliorate the process of recruiting, the organisation of trainings and protection of employees from harassment. Other areas include how to improve work and life balance and how to reduce the income differences between women and men.

 

Examples on how to improve the recruitment process:

  • Have mixed jurys of recrutement
  • Work on the feminisation/masculinisation of professional titles
  • Adapt the changing rooms and toilets at different working places to make them accessible for both women and men

Example on how to facilitate equal access to education:

  • Organise trainings to make them compatible with family or personal obligations (look at the length, the hours and the distance from working places and residential areas)

 

The guide also presents several examples from local and regional authorities in France that can be used as sources of inspiration:

 

Brittany (Bretagne) Region

The Perzhded device (which means “qualification” in Breton) is a training program launched by the Brittany Regional Council intended for school officers, (an environment particularly dominated by women) allowing them to leave for ten months to complete a training for another profession. The Regional Council received around 5000 applications from which approximately 300 has been selected for the training. The project has enabled women to develop skills in new areas considered as typically male professions such as plumbing and electricity.

 

Picardie Region

The regional council of Picardie did a “gender mapping” of different professions to develop a reference leaflet for different jobs highlighting what skills that are needed for different positions. By underlining the similarities with different professions the reference leaflet aims to promote transferability of skills between different jobs that are traditionally dominated by women or men.

 

The City of Rennes

The City of Rennes built mixed dressing rooms and adapted working clothes and tools to facilitate for both women and men to access different professions.

 

To access the guide please click on the link: INET : Professional Equality between men and women : keys to act

For further information please visit the website of INET : www.inet.cnfpt.fr


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