Unanimity and applause. In the midst of quibbles, barbs and criticism, it is a beautiful moment of harmony and consensus that the Poitiers municipal council offered itself, Monday December 16, 2024, to defend professional equality between women and men. .
The majority and opposition agreed to vote for the establishment of two new rights: menstrual leave and the alignment of paternity leave with maternity leave.
“It’s not just a good woman’s thing!” »
“And no, it’s not normal to have pain when you’re on your period. And it’s not just a good woman’s thing.” emphasized opposition MP Isabelle Chédaneau during the session, to welcome the first measure.
“It is a way of empowering fathers that we are taking, a measure intended to promote equality in the couple. Equal leave, equal load »summarized Zoé Lorioux-Chevalier for the majority while commenting on the second.
So, from 1is Next January, women suffering from painful, incapacitating periods or endometriosis will be able to benefit from a special authorization to be absent for one or two days per month. It will be granted upon presentation of an annual medical certificate. The measure will concern agents of the City, CCAS and Grand Poitiers (1).
Paternity and childcare leave will be extended. It is currently four weeks, but the City has decided to extend it by an additional six weeks in order to align it with the duration of maternity leave. It can be split into two parts.
Distribution of tasks
“This should make it possible to improve the distribution of tasks,” for Stéphane Allouche, assistant in charge of personnel. And therefore, in turn, it also encourages the recruitment of young couples. The attractiveness of equality thus aims to fill these vacant positions for which recruitment is sometimes difficult.
In the challenge of professional equality, the assessment of the City of Poitiers displays a record score of 98/100 when examining differences in remuneration, advancement or distribution in services.
Exits from precariousness
Even in former male strongholds such as technical services, the City is moving towards equality with 42% women. It remains to feminize the municipal police force which only has 26.9%. And the CCAS, where early childhood and personal assistance missions do not interest men!
The work carried out to promote the advancement of women, salary alignment, access to positions of responsibility, and the creation of mixed changing rooms has been coupled with a lot of work to extract from precariousness the eternal temporary workers assigned to the most difficult tasks. less rewarding. Seventy-two have now come out.
(1) The measure had already been voted on by Grand Poitiers during its last meeting on November 29.
A municipal mutual fund accessible to all
Access to care for all is also equality. However, this is still far from being the case when three million people do not have mutual insurance or have mutual insurance with too partial coverage. Even if health is not part of municipal competences, the local health contract has addressed this issue. The municipal council adopted the project to create a municipal solidarity mutual. The goal is to allow those who wish to subscribe to this mutual insurance while benefiting from negotiated rates made attractive by the number of members on a city scale.
The CCAS board of directors will examine the offers by taking into account thirteen criteria including the absence of deficiencies regarding care or hospitalization, 100% reimbursement of medications, permanence in the neighborhoods, etc. The project schedule provides for a choice of mutual insurance in the summer of 2025.
