ABSTRACT
December 1993 saw a lively, not to say acrimonious debate in the French press which centred around the question of whether mothers (and fathers) should receive financial support if they decided to give up working outside the home in order to bring up their children. Some called the allowance in question the salaire maternel, others referred to it as the salaire parental and yet others termed it the allocation de libre choix (free choice allowance). The debate surrounding the salaire maternel is an important one as it crystallises the arguments to do with the rôle of women in France today and reveals the precariousness of women’s situation. As the writers of the report prepared for the fourth United Nations world conference on women argue:
If the fact that women work outside the home is, for the most part, widely accepted today, their right to do so is nevertheless questioned from time to time. The question ‘should they work or not?’ is always asked, individually and collectively of women and women alone…. women’s right to work which is generally protected and promoted, is not, however, thought to be self evident in the same way that men’s is.
