More than 200 years after the principle of equal access to public employment was enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the reality is sometimes quite different during job interviews.

Despite increased mobilization by public authorities, discrimination persists in the public sector.

Co-president of the La Cordée association, which will present around thirty proposals to the National Assembly on Tuesday to increase social diversity in the public service, Damien Zaversnik judges the recruitment biases “intolerable for a public service”.

It is for example "the person who has an accent and who we will ask where she comes from", illustrates Damien Zaversnik.

Or the veiled candidate to whom the jury will "ask questions about Islamism or terrorism", he adds.



In a dossier published in 2022 and devoted to diversity in the public service, three researchers identified a bias that particularly distorts the recruitment process.

"The criterion of the supposed origin" of the applicant penalizes him, explains Yannick L'Horty, one of the authors of the study.

Less discrimination in the State civil service

To reach this conclusion, the three researchers analyzed the responses to nearly 2,600 job offers for administrative and nursing assistant positions - two professions which are experiencing recruitment difficulties and where employers are therefore more reluctant. to refuse an application.

Result: candidates whose name sounds supposedly North African are less often called back by the recruiter or invited to a job interview than candidates whose name is supposedly French.

In other words, an applicant has 21% less chance of being "recruited as a public executive with a North African-sounding name", according to La Cordée.

In their 2022 study, the three researchers also note that discrimination in hiring is "rarer in the state civil service" (ministries, education, judges, etc.) and "more frequent" in hospitals and local communities.

Persistent discrimination due to supposed origin is also observed in the recruitment of private companies.

Three particularly penalizing criteria

Public and private combined, "three criteria are the most penalizing" for candidates, says Yannick L'Horty: "the origin of North or sub-Saharan Africa, the situation of disability and parenthood".

To reduce the recruitment biases of public employers, successive ministers have introduced numerous measures such as the “Prepas Talents” which allow young people from modest backgrounds to prepare for the civil service competitions under better conditions.

An annual grant of 4,000 euros as well as housing and catering assistance are thus offered to candidates.

“We have seen a real listening” from political leaders for a few years, welcomes Mélissa Ramos, co-president of La Cordée.

In practice, public recruiters have no choice but to expand their recruitment pools if they want to continue to meet the demand for public services throughout the country.

But among the political measures aimed at increasing social diversity, "we don't know what works", regrets Yannick L'Horty.

For the researcher, there is a "very clear contrast between the mass of actions deployed" by successive governments and the rare assessments of their effectiveness.

Despite its ambition to set an example, the public sector is in any case not "systematically sheltered from the risk of discrimination", he believes.

high tech

New technologies: Should accents be “erased” by artificial intelligence?

Company

Integrating LGBTI+ people into the world of work is a profession

  • Company

  • Discrimination

  • Public function

  • Islamophobia

  • Disability

  • Racism