On 09 April, Alexandre Bompard, CEO of the multinational retailing group announced the introduction of paid leave for absences that are specifically related to women’s health. Employees affected by endometriosis (1 in 10 women on average) will be able to benefit from 12 days leave per year upon presentation of the appropriate documents. Carrefour will also grant 3 days leave for miscarriage (the government recently promised to dispense with the one day of absence that would otherwise have to elapse before compensation rights apply) as well as one day of leave for females taking recourse to medically assisted reproduction (during embryo transfer, the company clarifies). Neither of these two categories will require sick leave treatment. Carrefour is also announcing a campaign to raise awareness among managers in order to “communicate the appropriate behaviour to adopt in the face of the various difficulties that women may encounter at work in terms of their health”.
“For us, gender equality in the workplace is not theoretical equality, but rather real equality, which takes female specificities into account in the exercise of their professional activity, and particularly in terms of health. Through our commitments on endometriosis, MAR and miscarriage, we want to improve the daily lives of our 50,000 female employees, and beyond that, contribute to a change in business practices,” explains Alexandre Bompard.
We note that these measures are currently only being deployed in France. Furthermore, and unlike in other companies and Spain, which has written menstrual leave into the law, menstrual leave is not yet a reality at Carrefour.