POCHIC Sophie

"The production of figures is at the heart of feminist mobilizations and gender politics, whether we think of quotas for women, sexed indicators, discrimination trials, gender budgeting or the counting of feminicides. It is a potential vehicle for raising awareness of the existence of unjust and unacceptable situations, but it also generates controversy about what should be counted and how to count. The wage gap between women and men is a perfect illustration of this: depending on the method of calculation, it can range from 25% to 9%. However, the issues of power and knowledge raised by such tools often remain in the shadows. Focusing on the sphere of work, this book aims to fill this gap with a twofold objective: to show how the sociology of quantification makes it possible to think critically about public equality policies and organizational strategies based on numbers and indicators; and to analyze the framing of professional and salary equality that is hidden behind the figures in order to reveal the political games and issues at stake. It is based on in-depth surveys in social sciences (sociology, political science, management, economics and law) and testimonies of committed experts, drawing on international comparisons (France, England, Denmark, Sweden and Quebec).

In France, the unionization rate in 2017 is estimated to be around 11%. Among all members, women represent 36%. While we are witnessing a relative feminization of the union fabric under the impetus of the "women's cause space", women are still underrepresented, both at the bottom of the hierarchy among members, at intermediate levels among workplace activists, and in executive positions in union organizations. Although women have massively invested the salaried labor market since the end of World War II, unions have long been reluctant to open up to women, oscillating between proclaiming their right to work and sending them back to the home.To understand the permanence of this observation, the thesis proposes to study the construction of union careers in the light of the question of the articulation of the life spheres of CFDT activists. Through the notion of biographical availability, which refers to a relative absence of biographical constraints (family, professional, financial, etc.) and which tends to make activism time-consuming and/or risky, the thesis invites us to take seriously the temporal dimension in the process of manufacturing union commitment and its inequalities within France's leading union.This thesis is based first of all on documentary research from the CFDT's confederal archives. From the study of leaflets, femininity and masculinity, like mobile cursors, allow us to approach the relationship of the union organization to the cause of women in a historical way. It is then based on a corpus of 40 biographical interviews of CFDT activists conducted in each stratum of the organization: by a professional and sectoral axis on the one hand, and interprofessional and territorial on the other. Finally, it is based on the creation of a new national statistical survey: the EPASY survey, which retrospectively and jointly retraces the professional, intimate and trade union dimensions of 1115 CFDT activists. This research first highlights the weight of biographical availability in the construction of militant careers in union space and time. Depending on certain professional and family configurations, union careers accelerate or slow down. Union involvement and its level are more or less facilitated. But this biographical availability is the place of inequalities according to the gender and the class of belonging of the activists, in particular according to the level of economic, cultural and activist resources.

The article traces the story of equal pay policy formation from the early 1980s to the present, from agenda-setting to policy adoption through to implementation, evaluation and outcomes. Until 2010, equal pay policy was implemented through collective bargaining at company and sector levels within a legal framework that failed to establish penalties for non-compliance. Persistent mobilization of feminist actors inside and outside of government contributed to breaking with this symbolic policy. A financial penalty for non-compliant companies was established. The article shows that the strengthening of the existing framework was not sufficient to counter the reluctance of companies to make a solid commitment to closing the gender pay gap, and the outcome appears to be a clear case of “gender accommodation” in GEPP terms. However, recent feminist mobilization around more effective implementation on equal pay suggests that the struggle for more authoritative equal pay policies in the firm is still on the policy agenda.

The laws of 2008 on the reform of trade union representation and of 2015 on social dialogue introduced new obligations to negotiate in companies on the "reconciliation" of trade union and professional activity. How can we explain this sudden attention of the public authorities to "union discrimination"? Are we witnessing a historical break in French industrial relations? Based on six monographs of large companies with contrasting labor practices, this book shows how the negotiation of agreements on union rights and "management of union career paths" is also a response to the growth in litigation, led in particular by the CGT since the 1990s, which has contributed to an awareness of their rights by union members. While these company agreements now better protect the representatives most involved in social dialogue, who sign agreements, they do not radically change managerial practices in the field, which continue to stigmatize local trade unionists, especially when they oppose restructuring or denounce the deterioration of working conditions through protest practices.

Survey on the quality and implementation of gender equality agreements and plans developed in 2014-2015. The second part of this study places the texts in the context of their elaboration and implementation thanks to the realization of 20 monographs of company negotiations on professional equality carried out in 2016 and 2017. This localized qualitative approach makes it possible to assess, for each selected company, the quality of the texts produced and to reconstruct the entire text production and implementation process, by comparing the points of view of the main people involved. The monographs cover six sectors of activity, including two predominantly male sectors, two mixed sectors and two service sectors with a predominantly female workforce (sectors absent from previous studies on the subject). The final sample makes it possible to vary the rate of feminization, the coverage or not of a branch agreement, the type of text signed (plan or agreement), the size of the company and the geographical location.

This article proposes to study the discreet ‘battles of numbers’ at workplace level, particularly exacerbated on pay equity, in relation to its potential additional costs for employers. Figures are at once a framework, an object and a resource for power struggles between social partners. This approach is inspired by ‘statactivism’, a research perspective that studies the ways and contexts in which statistics can become tools for social mobilization. In a European context where bargaining is increasingly decentralized to company level, we argue that researchers should pay attention to statistical resources and quantification skills of negotiators, both on the management and unions side. They should also include in their analytical framework the influence of experts and specialists who advise social partners on how to strategically produce and use gender‐sensitive statistics. In this article, two case studies allow us to open the ‘black box’ of equality bargaining, revealing challenges and controversies of gender pay reporting.

This article proposes to study the discreet ‘battles of numbers’ at workplace level, particularly exacerbated on pay equity, in relation to its potential additional costs for employers. Figures are at once a framework, an object and a resource for power struggles between social partners. This approach is inspired by ‘statactivism’, a research perspective that studies the ways and contexts in which statistics can become tools for social mobilization. In a European context where bargaining is increasingly decentralized to company level, we argue that researchers should pay attention to statistical resources and quantification skills of negotiators, both on the management and unions side. They should also include in their analytical framework the influence of experts and specialists who advise social partners on how to strategically produce and use gender‐sensitive statistics. In this article, two case studies allow us to open the ‘black box’ of equality bargaining, revealing challenges and controversies of gender pay reporting.

Based on an ethnography combining observation and interviews, this thesis analyzes the migratory experiences of French residents in Abu Dhabi. Nuancing the portrait of "expatriates" frequently presented as hypermobile, it shows that they in fact take marked migratory routes. These routes are notably shaped by the encounter between Emirati politics and the transnational French state, in a context of postcolonial competition that translates into strategies of distancing themselves from British colonialism and US imperialism. The construction of the national group, framed by migratory institutions, unfolds in the delimitation of borders associating franchness and whiteness, through interactions with Emirati nationals as well as with other migrant groups. If the relationship with the South Asian majority population is marked by a distancing, albeit disrupted by the frequency of domestic employment, the relationship with Emirati citizens engages a singular disturbance in the postcolonial order. French residents thus experience a limited but anxiety-provoking vulnerability to Emiratis who are perceived as omnipotent. In this way, French migration to Abu Dhabi reveals itself as a place of destabilization as well as a solidification of whiteness. By highlighting the way in which these white reconfigurations intersect with a gender regime in which hetero-conjugality is reinforced, the thesis makes a contribution to the plural analysis of social relations in North-South migrations.

This research examines the conditions for structuring and sustaining a separate commitment for women in Breton agricultural organizations and mobilizations. Mostly composed of women farmers in couples and located at the border between equality associations, professional sociability circles and discussion groups, women's agricultural leadership spaces offer an ideal opportunity to question not only the interweaving of professional and marital identities in the commitment but also the lability of the rhetorical uses of equality and feminism in non-mixed professional spaces. The analysis of their position in the space of agricultural representation questions the degree of autonomy of the claims made on behalf of women farmers, their influence on organizational agendas and their effect on the construction of militant careers. The study is based on a four-year observation of the formal and informal activities of women's groups, a study of their professional documentation, a census of their articles in the agricultural press, interviews with the women involved and the compilation of statistical data on women's mandates in Breton agricultural organizations since 1990. On the basis of an analysis that crosses gender studies, the sociology of activism and the sociology of agricultural professional representation, our thesis consists of demonstrating that groups and mobilizations of women farmers forge the contours of an agricultural "women's cause" under the tutelage of categorical interests and anchored to the normative ideal of gender complementarity. As receptacles of intersecting professional, organizational and marital positions, the spaces of women's engagement produce ambivalent politicizations of these multiple affiliations, which are at the same time bearers of contestation as well as reproduction of gendered hierarchies and of the social and political order.

Through a hundred portraits of men and women developed during a survey in four ministerial directorates, sociologists revisit the issue of gender career inequalities in the administrative elite. ©Electre 2018.

Since the end of the 1990s, the right to non-discrimination by trade unions has been largely reinforced, whether in legislation or through judicial mobilization. In 2008, the law reforming trade union representativeness created an obligation for large companies to negotiate on the articulation of trade union and professional activity for companies with more than 300 employees. This article examines how these legal changes have effectively modified the situation of union representatives in companies. Four monographs of large companies shed light on the contrasting dynamics of the appropriation of the law, depending on the agreements on trade union rights and possible litigation. These monographs reveal a discrepancy between the union rights agreements negotiated for the most committed union representatives, and aimed at guaranteeing a salary increase equivalent to that of their professional group, and managerial practices in the field, marked by a stigmatization of local unionists and protest practices. The few measures for the recognition of skills acquired through union experience (VAES) are aimed less at recognizing union skills and responding to aspirations for career advancement than at facilitating the exercise of social dialogue by staff members.

This article looks at gender-based inequalities in management careers in four general directorates of two ministries - economic and financial on the one hand, and social on the other - which contrast from the point of view of their feminization and the types of career. The survey is based on a hundred or so life stories of women and men. Beyond family upbringing and unequal access to the royal road of the ÉNA, the career blockages of women are detected at the heart of administrations, through the rules of availability, geographical mobility, and self-imposed homophilic co-optation. Policies of professional equality are struggling to change them, but they are bringing about a greater awareness of inequalities.