Paris (AFP)

"Cash Investigation" tackles Tuesday evening on France 2 to a problem on which progress is modest and mentalities slow to evolve: that of wage inequalities between men and women, with uplifting focus on nurses and careers finance.

With as always a tone sometimes educational, sometimes biting, the program by Elise Lucet contains testimonies and case studies, to illustrate phenomena such as the glass ceiling or the effect of pregnancies and maternity on careers. But also to highlight cases of discrimination and harassment, and to take stock of reforms with the taste of incomplete or even tinged with bitterness.

The starting point of this survey entitled "Balance your wages", signed Zoé de Bussière, is the persistent gap (22.8%) between the wages of men and women, calculated by INSEE. And yet, a law imposes equal remuneration, for equal work, since ... 1972.

The show focuses on two sectors: banking, where the gap climbs to 36% and where women represent 57% of employees, but only 16% of managers, and hospital, where nurses, despite being established as heroines of the fight against Covid-19, have situations far from dreaming. With an instructive detour through Quebec, land of "pay equity".

The investigation exposes in particular a group action launched a few months ago by the CGT against the Caisse d'épargne Ile de France, and studies the case of Natixis, another subsidiary of the BPCE group.

Nurses, for their part, are among the most feminized professions, which are alike by their low wages, often despite the harshness of their working conditions (night or staggered hours, heavy loads, etc.).

Celebrated during the health crisis, they are however poorly placed in terms of wages, with wages lower than their Spanish or Greek colleagues, and lower than those of predominantly male trades of technician type, whose skills are generally close but the responsibilities less .

And their latest salary conquest, recalls the survey, was accompanied by a consequent sacrifice: a reform of 2010/2011 forced the nurses of the public hospital then in activity to choose between maintaining the right to retirement at 57, or a salary increase (change from category B to A) accompanied by a retirement postponed to 62 (which has become the norm for new hires since then).

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