Is French Gender Pay Gap Transparency Legislation Effective?

This paper examines the impact of France’s 2018 gender pay gap transparency law which implements a 100 point gender equity index and two corrective measure thresholds (firms below 85 must publish an action plan; those below 75 for three years are fined) for firms with more than 50 employees. I use firm-level reports with a regression discontinuity design and event-time study to assess the effectiveness of the thresholds in changing firm behaviour, finding evidence that firms improve their gender equity in order to avoid fines below the 75 threshold. I use an individual-level administrative dataset which I transform into a pseudopanel and a difference-in-difference strategy around the 50 employee threshold to assess the overall impact of the policy, finding a 3.7 percentage point increase in women’s hourly wages relative to men in treated firms. This effect is primary driven by a fall in male wages.