Financement public des associations sanitaires et sociales françaises et écart salarial femmes-hommes

The disparity in gender pay gaps among nonprofit organizations (NPOs) has rarely been studied. In this article, we examine this issue by focusing on French associations, which represent the vast majority of NPOs in this country, and more specifically those working in the health and social sectors. We start from the hypothesis that there is a negative correlation between the gender pay gap in these organizations and the share of public funding in their monetary resources. Two arguments are put forward to support this hypothesis: a) public authorities may make their funding, particularly through public procurement, conditional on the reduction of gender pay gaps within the organizations receiving public support; b) NPOs that are heavily dependent on this support are likely, through a process of hybridization, to adopt wage policies that are less unfavorable to women, as is the case in the public sector. For the empirical investigation, we combined data from two sources: the INSEE survey "Situation of associations in 2018" and an administrative file of all employees in the country (BTS) for the same year. The results obtained show that there is indeed a negative correlation between the gender pay gap and the share of public funding in the resources of non-profit organizations. This situation can be explained by lower male salaries rather than higher female salaries. This situation may be the result of a desire to reduce the gender pay gap while maintaining a high level of vigilance on the part of associations in controlling their wage costs in a context of severe financial constraints.