Battles through and about statistics in French pay equity bargaining: The politics of quantification at workplace level

This article proposes to study the discreet ‘battles of numbers’ at workplace level, particularly exacerbated on pay equity, in relation to its potential additional costs for employers. Figures are at once a framework, an object and a resource for power struggles between social partners. This approa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Gender, work, and organization work, and organization, 2019-06, Vol.26 (5), p.650-667
Main Authors: Pochic, Sophie, Chappe, Vincent‐Arnaud
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bargaining
Case studies
Comparable worth
Decentralization
Equality
equality bargaining
Experts
Fairness
Gender
Gender pay gap
Gender studies
Humanities and Social Sciences
Measurement
Mobilization
Political science
Politics
Power
quantification
Social power
Sociology
Specialists
Statistics
Transparency
Workplaces
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article proposes to study the discreet ‘battles of numbers’ at workplace level, particularly exacerbated on pay equity, in relation to its potential additional costs for employers. Figures are at once a framework, an object and a resource for power struggles between social partners. This approach is inspired by ‘statactivism’, a research perspective that studies the ways and contexts in which statistics can become tools for social mobilization. In a European context where bargaining is increasingly decentralized to company level, we argue that researchers should pay attention to statistical resources and quantification skills of negotiators, both on the management and unions side. They should also include in their analytical framework the influence of experts and specialists who advise social partners on how to strategically produce and use gender‐sensitive statistics. In this article, two case studies allow us to open the ‘black box’ of equality bargaining, revealing challenges and controversies of gender pay reporting.
ISSN:0968-6673
1468-0432
DOI:10.1111/gwao.12298