Gender pay gap continues to narrow in France

The gender pay gap in France narrowed by a third between 1995 and 2023, new data from Insee, the French statistics office, has revealed.

According to the data, in 2023, the average income for women in the private sector was 22.2% lower than that of men.

‘This pay gap reflected differences in the annual volume of work, as women were less often employed during the year and more often worked part-time,’ Insee commented. ‘However, for the same amount of work, women’s average salary was 14.2% lower than men’s.’

The narrowing of the gender pay gap in France has ‘intensified’ since 2019, it added.

Gender distribution

Differences in pay can also be explained by the gender distribution of professions, with women not occupying many of the same sectors as men, and therefore having less access to the highest paying jobs, according to Insee.

In 2023, women accounted for more than two fifths (42%) of full-time equivalent positions in the private sector, but only 24% of the top 1% in high-paying jobs. For the same job in the same establishment, the full-time equivalent wage gap was reduced to 3.8%.

‘The wage income gap between women and men employees was even more pronounced between parents: mothers worked significantly fewer hours than fathers, but also had lower full-time equivalent wages, and the gap increased along with the number of children,’ the statistics body said. Read more here.