Despite ethnic tensions, counting voters by race remains taboo in French presidential campaign

Washington Post World
By Associated Press, Published: April 16

PARIS — Ahead of France’s presidential elections, you might find polls showing how factory workers or university students are likely to vote — but you’d be hard-pressed to find data on which candidates black or Muslim voters prefer.

A 1978 law forbids anyone, from government census-takers to private researchers, from counting citizens based on their ethnic, racial or religious background. Though the law allows a few exceptions, it makes it virtually impossible for pollsters or political parties to measure nationwide support for candidates among those various constituencies, a situation that would be unimaginable in a U.S. presidential election.

Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/despite-ethnic-tensions-counting-voters-by-race-remains-taboo-in-french-presidential-campaign/2012/04/16/gIQALGalKT_story.html

One French School's Secret for Making Affirmative Action Work

The Atlantic
Apr 9 2012, 10:01 AM ET
Before Richard Descoings died suddenly and scandalously last week, he made controversial -- and surprisingly successful -- changes to how one of France's most elite universities builds its student body.

France's Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, known colloquially as Sciences Po, has trained two out of the past three French presidents, four out of the past six prime ministers, countless other assorted politicians and diplomats, and a significant chunk of Europe's top CEOs and financiers. Until 2001, the students who came in were just as socially élite as the graduates who came out.

In 2001, that began to change. The man at the heart of the change was Richard Descoings, who was found dead in a Manhattan hotel last week. And though questions remain about the circumstances of his death, it's his work leading Sciences Po that will surely determine his legacy. He has left promoters of social mobility in education -- both French and American -- plenty to think about.

Full Story: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/one-french-schools-secret-for-making-affirmative-action-work/255612/

Elite Institutions Are Tested on Diversity

The New York Times
By D.D. GUTTENPLAN
Published: February 6, 2011

LONDON — David Lammy is still mad. In December, Mr. Lammy, a former British higher education minister, currently serving as a Labour Party member of Parliament, released figures showing vastly different success rates for white and black applicants to the country’s two oldest universities. Oxford, he claimed, admitted only a single black student of Caribbean origin last year, while Cambridge, which admitted one in three white applicants, admitted just one in six black applicants.
Both universities pushed back hard, with Oxford claiming to have admitted a total of 27 British black students and Cambridge demonstrating that, contrary to Mr. Lammy’s claim, the university did have black academics — though it was unable to say how many.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/education/07iht-educLede.html

France to push women into the boardroom

TimesOnline
January 21, 2010

The French version of the glass ceiling has just been cracked open by parliamentary vote. With the backing of President Sarkozy's administration, the National Assembly last night passed a bill that aims to force big companies to appoint women to 40 percent of their seats on the board.
The quota is likely to reach the statue books, with amendments, later this year, making France the biggest state so far to use the law to break the boys only culture of the boardroom. Norway introduced a 40 percent rule in 2002 when women accounted for only 6 per cent of board seats there. Spain has also just passed a similar law.
The measure will mean an upheaval because the boards of France's top companies remain male bastions, along with those of southern Europe (see chart below). Women occupy just 10.5 percent of board seats in the 650 publicly quoted companies to which the new law will apply. Corporations will have six years to reach the 40 percent mark. After that, all board appointments will be voided if they do not maintain at least a 60-40 share between men and women.

Full Story: http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/charles_bremner/2010/01/france-pushes-women-into-the-boardroom-.html

Raising the Burqa

Inside Higher Ed
January 7, 2010
The battle over banning burqas and hijabs has been waged at universities outside the United States for years, but now the debate has crossed the Atlantic, with a Massachusetts institution’s newest safety measure.
As of January 1, students at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences must not only wear identification cards but make sure they are not wearing “any head covering that obscures a student’s face," the policy reads, "for reasons of safety and security."
While some students might want to wear ski masks to cover their faces during New England’s chilly winters and others might choose face coverings for dubious reasons of fashion, the rule appears to most clearly affect Muslim women.

Full Story: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/07/veil

French Approve Paid Time Off for Those With Dying Relatives

CNS News
February 17, 2009

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
By Staff, Associated Press

Paris (AP) - France's lower house of parliament unanimously passed a law Tuesday granting government payments to those who take time off work to care for dying relatives in their last weeks of life. French law already allows people to take up to six months of unpaid leave from their jobs to care for a dying family member. The new bill would allow people who leave work in such circumstances to receive euro49 ($62) a day for up to three weeks from the government. Unusually, the law enjoyed across-the-board support by legislators on left and right in the National Assembly. It now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to pass. The law's authors estimate the bill would affect about 20,000 families a year and cost a total of euro20 million ($25.2 million).

Full Story: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=43664

Sarkozy Acts for Ethnic Diversity

The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:41 p.m. ET

PALAISEAU, France (AP) -- President Nicolas Sarkozy, impatient with what he said was the slow pace of promoting diversity in France, announced measures Wednesday to put more ethnic minorities on TV screens, in political parties and in elite schools.
A government action plan to be presented by March will spell out the measures in detail. The project is to be overseen by a newly appointed commissioner for diversity and equality, Yazid Sabeg, a son of Algerian immigrants who is known for his efforts to bring equality to the workplace.
''It's not moving fast enough,'' Sarkozy said in a speech at the elite Ecole Polytechnique, south of Paris, a symbol of the very system that has locked minorities out of the mainstream. France must change so that ''no French person feels like a stranger in his own country.''
Turning to his audience, Sarkozy said prestigious schools must make room for all.
''We are going to throw open the doors of places where tomorrow's elite are formed,'' he said.
He wants top schools to reserve 25 percent of their places for students receiving state aid by September -- and 30 percent by September 2010. Many students who receive government education funds are ethnic minorities from underprivileged backgrounds.
Increasing diversity was a campaign promise of Sarkozy, elected in May 2007. Long ignored, diversity topped the political agenda after fall 2005 riots in poor French neighborhoods exposed deep anger among people of immigrant origin and revealed the extent of discrimination in France.
The election of Barack Obama as U.S. president sparked renewed soul-searching about why so few ethnic minorities rise to the top in France.
Sarkozy squarely rejected affirmative action for France. But in a significant departure from French practice, he raised the possibility that scientists might begin gathering statistics on ethnicity -- long taboo in a country that is officially colorblind.
Researchers are handicapped by the inability to make head counts based on religious or ethnic factors and have pressed for permission to do so. Sarkozy said scientists must be able ''to clearly identify lagging and measure progress.''

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2008/12/17/world/AP-EU-France-Ethnic-Diversity.html

Miss France wants to advertise French diversity

Associated Press
By RACHID AOULI, Associated Press Writer – Sun Dec 7, 12:03 pm ET

PARIS – The new Miss France, born to an African-American mother and white French father, said Sunday she wants to advertise her country's diversity on the world stage.
Chloe Mortaud is not the first nonwhite winner of the beauty pageant, but she is joining a growing chorus of French public figures breaking traditions by speaking openly about race.
"I want to go to people and explain to them that fear of the other is unfounded," she told The Associated Press the day after being crowned. "I want to incarnate ... today's French diversity" at international beauty pageants.
France has championed a colorblind standard that sees all citizens as just French, regardless of ethnic origins — an ideal meant to make everyone feel equal. But it has failed to snuff out racism, particularly against immigrants from former French colonies in Africa. Discrimination in part fed riots in 2005 by largely minority youth in French housing projects.
Days after Barack Obama's election last month, leading French figures published a manifesto urging affirmative action-like policies to expand opportunities for millions of blacks, Arabs and other minorities. First lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy said she hoped the "Obama effect" would reshape France's political and social elite.

Full Story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081207/ap_en_ot/eu_france_miss_france_4

Call for affirmative action

The StraitsTimes
Nov 9, 2008
Call for affirmative action
PARIS - FRANCE'S first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy backed a petition on Sunday calling for affirmative action in France, one of the world's most racially mixed countries but whose rulers are almost exclusively white.
'Power (in France) has often had the same face: that of men who are white and ageing,' she told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, which published the petition drawn up by an Algerian-born French business leader.
'That is why I can identify with this appeal. Without political measures we will be waiting too long,' said President Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, who said she could not sign the petition because of her position but that she backed it entirely.
The petition was titled 'Oui, nous pouvons!', the French translation of Obama's campaign slogan 'Yes We Can', and said that the African-American's 'election illustrated by a cruel contrast the failings of the French Republic'.
'By neglecting its own diversity, France has driven to despair a whole swathe of its youth and has prevented it from being proud of its country,' it said.
It called on the state and on employers to put in place 'policies that promote (ethnic) diversity' that should come with an obligation to show concrete results. [Full story: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_300329.html]