Employed since 2017, Sandra says that the announcement of her pregnancy was the starting point of a series of “humiliations” which led her to burnout.
“They didn't say to me: 'Your pregnancy is bothering us.' But everything happened just after the announcement,” she recalls, still shaken.
“I wondered when I had missed something, if I was that bad. I had a lot of anxiety attacks,” testifies the thirty-year-old.
Burn-out
The second executive, who requested anonymity, relates having heard that a restructuring of her department was underway at the end of maternity leave, at the beginning of 2022. On return, “they put me in the closet, my N + 2 didn’t calculate me, it was as if I no longer existed,” she remembers.
“When you've been in a box for twelve years, when, from one day to the next, you're nothing, no more hormones, no more antidepressants… It was a period that I wouldn't wish on anyone,” says -she.
According to a study by the Association for Executive Employment, 44% of those who have had maternity leave say they have encountered difficulties in finding their place in their former position.
Women executives “often have the feeling that (pregnancy) is going to be bad news to announce”, that having a child constitutes a “brake in professional development”, observes its director of studies, Pierre Lamblin.
Contacted by AFP, Sephora indicates that it does not comment on current procedures but assures that its practices “ban all forms of discrimination”. On its website, the company prides itself on having obtained a score of 95 out of 100 on the professional gender equality index in 2023.
For Sandra, however, from the beginning of January 2023, “the employment relationship has completely changed, to the point of becoming untenable”, details her request for referral to the industrial tribunal of Nanterre.
-In March, she received, for the first time, a negative evaluation and learned that her request for mobility within the LVMH group, validated before her pregnancy, had been rejected.
Shortly before the end of her maternity leave, in September 2023, her superiors announced to her that, upon her return, she would take a new position with less responsibility.
Sandra's case is quite typical: before the announcement, you have promotions, a lack of reproaches, then a lack of mobility, bad evaluations.
Then, in January 2024, after several reports which did not receive a response, according to her, a psychiatrist diagnosed her with burnout.
Sandra's case is “fairly typical: before (the announcement), you have promotions, an absence of reproaches, then (…) an absence of mobility, bad evaluations”, comments Mr. Bitton, who has been working for 20 years in these kinds of files.
“Layaway”
Contacted by AFP, elected officials from the CGT union say they accompanied the anonymous “sidelined” executive upon her return to the company, without being notified of other files.
But if few testimonies come up, it is mainly because at headquarters, where there are many executives, the union culture is poorly developed, says one of them, on condition of anonymity.
In Sandra's case, an attempt at conciliation took place in October, but without success, paving the way for a hearing which will not take place before the end of 2026.
