The bill was passed in the lower house of the National Assembly with 44 votes in favor and two against. The proposal will now be considered in the Senate, where the right has a majority. Here, the outcome of the vote is far more uncertain, writes The Guardian.
Olivier Serva, an independent representative in the National Assembly who himself has African origins, is behind the bill.
The proposal would make all workplace discrimination based on hairstyle, colour, length or texture of hair illegal.
Election 2022 What to Watch American politician Ilhan Omar has been at the forefront of introducing hard discrimination laws in the USA. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Found in the USA
A similar law already exists in the United States, known as “The Crown Act”, writes the BBC.
In 2019, California was the first to introduce the law not to discriminate against people based on hair and hairstyle. This gained momentum when a four-year-old boy in the city of Chicago was sent home after he came to school with braids.
Both US President Joe Biden and Democratic representative Ilhan Omar, who became the first woman wearing a hijab in the US Congress, have supported the introduction of a hair discrimination law in the US.
– I want my two girls to grow up in a world where they know they will not be discriminated against because of their hair or the way they look, she wrote on X in 2022.
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France Hair Discrimination The French Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Olivier Serva (Thibault Camus/AP)
Includes blondes and redheads
Which hairstyles are protected by “The Crown Act” varies, but usually includes hairstyles that are linked to a specific cultural heritage, according to CNN. Hairstyles and braids such as box braids, cornrows and locks have been used as justification for removing African-American children and adults from classrooms and from the workforce. These hairstyles should work as protective hairstyles for African hair types.
The background for this bill is that women with an African background are often asked to change their hairstyle before, for example, job interviews, says Serva. Several American surveys show that a quarter of black women polled said they had been barred from jobs because of how they wore their hair at job interviews.
A similar investigation is difficult to obtain in France, where there are strict laws not to collect personal data related to race or ethnic origin, writes The Guardian.
But in the bill, Serva has included discrimination against blondes and redheads as well.
Lawyer, Eric Rocheblave, tells The Guardian that this law will only have a symbolic meaning, as there is already a law that states that you should not discriminate on the basis of posting.
– There is no legal vacuum here, he says.
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