ABSTRACT
In France, the hourly wage gap between women and men, continues to be somewhere around 27%, halfway between Sweden, where the situation is least discriminatory (with a 16% gap) and the United Kingdom (over 35%). The fact is that analysis of wage differentials is a complex matter since earnings themselves are a complex variable, involving multiple issues, from economic and social to political and institutional. A CERC (Centre for the Study of Income and Prices — 1991) study of low wages, using hourly rates, showed that in Great Britain, for example, 17% of full-timers and 60% of part-timers are underpaid, in comparison with the national average wages. Few studies of hourly wage differentials between part and full time work have been conducted in France. The development of pay policies revolving around flexibility and the individualisation of earnings is related to the question of wage differentials.
