Professional Equality of Women in French Banks Available to Purchase

Discrimination towards women leads to the underexploitation of an available potential. Hence the revision of recruitment procedures, the causes of women's slow promotion and other measures will be of benefit not only to women but to the whole organisation which will find within these measures the opportunity to evaluate the quality of its personnel management procedures and to achieve a more efficient management of available human potential. The essential characteristics of women's situation in the banking sector are described from the standpoint of jobs occupied and that of professional strategies. The impact of positive action used in three medium‐sized banks within the framework of the law of 13 July 1983 on professional equality between men and women is analysed. The work is based on two studies, one made within the Centre d'Etudes de l'Emploi, of 94 employees of a large French bank (65 women and 29 men) and the other made within the HEC‐ISA Centre, on the subject of companies having put equality action plans within the scope of the 1983 law.