Measure at least 1.70 m, be single and “representative of beauty”. For the association Dare feminism, the criteria for participating in the election of Miss France are “discriminatory”. She announced this Monday to have seized the industrial tribunal, believing that this “sexist” competition violated labor law.
The association and three women claiming to have had to give up taking the competition because they did not meet the criteria demanded by the organizers, decided to take the TV show to court. The company Miss France is targeted, but also Endemol, which produces it, and “uses women to produce an extremely lucrative audiovisual program while flouting labor rights”, consider the applicants.
If the candidates do not sign an employment contract with the organizers of the competition, their relationship with Endemol must be analyzed as that between an employee and his employer, says the association. It 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, the lawyer of Dare feminism.
Miss France, a recurring target
Consequently, the applicants ask the labor courts to order the organizers of the competition to remove from their rules the clauses which they consider discriminatory, such as size, dating or even those prohibiting smoking in public or wearing visible tattoos. or piercings.
Taking up arguments brandished for several years by activists, the association believes that the Miss France contest has “a negative and retrograde impact on the whole of society”.
Questioned by AFP, the company Miss France refused to react “immediately” to the procedure. It is unlikely that a decision will be made before the next competition, on December 11 in Caen, recognized the lawyer for the feminist association.