“Capillary discrimination” in the workplace, what deputies in France want to ban

France’s National Assembly (Deputies) approved this Thursday after reading a bill against “hair discrimination” in particular in the workplace, despite some experts’ reservations about the utility of the initiative.

Promoted by Olivier Serva, independent deputy for the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe, the text plans to add “haircut, color, length or texture” to the list of discriminations allowed by law.

The text, approved by a vote of 44 in favor and two against, must now be debated in the Senate, where the outcome of the vote is more uncertain.

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

The deputy referred to “black women who are forced to straighten their hair”, “red-headed people, victims of many negative prejudices” and “bald men” before job interviews.

“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 Barrett, a member of the presidential majority.

Twenty states in the United States have similar laws, recognizing hair discrimination as an expression of racism.

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

– “Highlight this type of discrimination” –

Serva cited a US study that found a quarter of black women surveyed said they had been rejected for a job because of the way they wore their hair in a job interview.

Such statistics are difficult to find in France, which prohibits the collection of personal information referring to a person’s race or ethnicity under the French Republic’s “universal” principles.

The bill, in fact, did not include the word “racism”, an omission noted by social anthropologist Daphne Bedinad as problematic.

“To make it just about hair discrimination is to mask the problems of people whose hair makes them the subject of discrimination, mostly black women,” he told newspaper Le Monde.

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

This is a “real, serious and political” problem, which “mainly affects women” and “racist people,” stressed Daniel Obono, a deputy of the radical left France Insomis party, who, like environmentalist Sabrina Sebaihi, “condemned systematic racism.”

Xavier Breton, a member of the right-wing party Los Republicanos, instead condemned the “terrorist ideology” and “comments that only try to divide our society.”

On the far right, Philip Schreck asked that the bill not be “mocked or ridiculed”, but it was asked. “Do we deal with the everyday problems of people with disabilities?

Some critics of the text consider it unnecessary, as discrimination based on physical appearance is already prohibited by law. “There is no legal loophole,” says Eric Rochebleau, a lawyer specializing in labor law.