The French voted to end discrimination against dreadlocks and Afro hairstyles

The lower house of the French parliament today passed the first reading of a law that bans discrimination because of dreadlocks, braids, afros and any other hair styles, colors and textures. This was reported by the Reuters agency, according to which the National Assembly thus defeated critics who described the law as an unnecessary import of American ideas.

Olivier Serva, a black MP from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, who drafted the bill, said it would help victims of this discrimination in and outside the workplace to be heard and win legal cases. “There is a lot of suffering (based on hair discrimination) and we have to take that into account,” he told Reuters.

Serva cited a 2023 study that showed two out of three black women in the United States changed their hairstyle for a job interview and that black women were 2.5 times more likely to be perceived as unprofessional. The study was conducted by the shampoo brand Dove, produced by the British concern Unilever, and the professional network Linked-In.

The bill, which aims to ban all discrimination related to hair texture or cut, will also protect blondes, for example, from sexist discrimination, Serva said. The proposal adds hair discrimination to the existing anti-discrimination law.

The draft law was approved by 44 legislators against just two, with many deputies not voting at all for this first reading of the text, as is often the case. The National Assembly has 577 members. It still needs to be approved by the Senate to become law. According to the AFP agency, it is not certain how the majority right-of-center senators will accept it.

In the United States, at least 23 states have passed laws aimed at protecting people from hair discrimination in the workplace and in public schools.

Not everyone supports the proposal in France, which prides itself on an egalitarian culture that does not allow ethnic quotas or even the collection of data based on ethnicity.

According to Reuters, Rep. Fabien Di Filipo of the conservative Republicans laughed in his speech in the parliamentary committee that discussed the proposal before the debate in the plenary. “Should we expect a bill tomorrow to discriminate against bald people, who I think are underrepresented in shampoo ads?” He said France already prohibits discrimination based on appearance, so the bill is unnecessary, adding that it aims to import an American way of thinking into French legislation.

MP Philippe Schreck of the far-right National Association told MPs they should be concerned with more important issues such as the country’s public debt rather than hair discrimination.