They must measure at least 1.70 m, be single and
"representative of beauty"
: the criteria for recruiting candidates for the Miss France election are
"discriminatory"
, says a feminist association, which announced on Monday that it had entered the labor court, considering that this
"sexist" competition
violated labor law.
The association "Dare feminism", as well as three women who claim to have had to give up taking the competition because they did not meet the criteria demanded by the organizers, have decided to
"take legal action" against
the famous program, broadcast each year. year in December by TF1.
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The procedure, brought before the industrial tribunal of Bobigny, targets the companies Miss France and Endemol Production, the association said in a press release.
Endemol
"uses women to make an extremely lucrative audiovisual program while flouting labor rights",
claim the applicants.
The candidates for the crown of beauty certainly do not sign any employment contract with the organizers of the competition. But their relationship with Endemol must be analyzed as that linking an employee to his employer, says the association, which is based on a 2013 case law, concerning the “Mister France” competition.
However, the Labor Code prohibits, in a recruitment, any criterion related to
"morals, age, family situation or physical appearance",
explained to AFP Me Violaine De Filippis-Abate, l advocate of "Dare feminism".
Consequently, the applicants ask the labor courts to order the organizers of the competition to remove from their rules these discriminatory clauses, such as those prohibiting smoking in public, or wearing visible tattoos or piercings.
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Questioned by AFP, the company Miss France refused to react
"immediately"
to this procedure.
In view of the usual length of the latter, it is unlikely that a decision will be rendered before the next competition, on December 11 in Caen, recognized Ms. de Filippis-Abate.
Taking up arguments brandished for several years by many activists, “Dare feminism” attributes to the Miss France contest
“a negative and retrograde impact on the whole of society”.
In its
"annual report on the state of sexism in France",
in 2019, the High Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCE), a consultative body responsible for advising the government, had itself qualified the Miss France contest as an
“archaic caricature”.
He had denounced in particular the requirement made to the candidates to be single and childless, and even never to have been married.