The Senate in France is set to debate a bill seeking to ban the discrimination against employees wearing different hairstyles in the workplace.
The bill, if passed, will restrain employers from demanding that their employees straighten their hairs, as well as for afros, dreadlocks and braids to be covered, the BBC reported on Wednesday.
The sponsors of the bill are hoping to curb workplace hostility experienced by blondes, redheads, bald victims, and mostly blacks, ultimately to protect them against “hair prejudice”.
An MP from the French Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe, Olivier Serva, who sponsored the bill, had presented an American study showing that a quarter of black women said they had been ruled out for jobs because of how they wore their hair at the interview.
Mr Serva said, “People who don’t fit in Eurocentric standards are facing discrimination, stereotypes and bias.”
However, critics of the bill insist there is already a French law in place banning the compilation of personal data about an individual’s race or ethnic background on the basis of the French Republic’s “universalist” principles.
On their part, anti-racism campaigners described the non-inclusion of the term “racism” in the bill as problematic, because many have been attacked with negative comments online over the looks of their natural hair.
