Judges and workplace ills: mechanisms of gendered invisibility

When the work accidents or occupational diseases of private sector employees are not officially recognized, the latter can go to court to challenge the French Sécurité sociale’s decision. Based on a survey in eight courts, this article studies how the implementation of the law reproduces or mitigates the unequal effects of the gendered division of labor and occupational exposure. While the mainly working-class applicants share the same disenfranchisement with regard to the procedure, their chances of winning their case are unequal depending on their gender. Claiming that their treatment of women and men is neutral, judges contribute to indirect discrimination against female workers through their rulings by applying standard law – often constructed in a neutral masculine form – to de facto distinct and unequal situations, thus reinforcing the gendered hierarchy of workplace ills.