France wants to ban “hair discrimination”

The French Parliament approved this Thursday in the first round a bill against “hair discrimination”, particularly in the workplace, despite criticism from some analysts about the usefulness of the initiative.

Promoted by Olivier Serva, independent deputy for the French overseas department of Guadeloupe, the text aims to add “the cut, color, length or texture of hair” to the list of discriminations that can be punished by law.

The text, which was approved by 44 votes in favor and two against, must now be debated in the Senate, where the result of the vote is uncertain.

“In France, discrimination based on physical appearance is already sanctioned, in theory”, declared Olivier Serva. “But there is a gap between theory and reality,” he highlighted.

The deputy mentioned “black women who are forced to straighten their hair” before a job interview, “redheaded people, victims of many negative prejudices” and “bald men”.

“I’m here with my braids. My wigs. When I applied for some jobs, they asked me to straighten my hair,” said black congresswoman Fanta Berete, a member of the presidential majority.

Similar laws exist in nearly 20 US states, which have identified hair discrimination as an expression of racism.

In the UK, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has published guidelines against hair discrimination in schools.

Olivier Serva mentioned a North American study that shows that 25% of black women interviewed stated that they lost places in selection processes due to the way they wore their hair in job interviews.

This type of statistics is difficult to find in France, which prohibits the compilation of personal data that mentions a person’s race or ethnic origin based on the French Republic’s “universalist” principles.

The bill does not, in fact, contain the term “racism,” noted Daphné Bedinade, a social anthropologist. This highlighted that the omission is problematic.

“Making this just about hair discrimination is masking the problems of people whose hair makes them an object of discrimination, the majority of whom are black women,” he told Le Monde newspaper.

For the Minister of Gender Equality, Aurore Bergé, the text has the “merit of highlighting this type of discrimination”, although the law “already allows us to fight” against it.

Some critics of the text consider it unnecessary because discrimination based on physical appearance is already prohibited by law. “There is no legal breach,” said Eric Rocheblave, a lawyer specializing in labor law.