A quarter of women report forms of discrimination when they return to work after breast cancer.
- Breast cancer remains the most common among women: each year, nearly 59,000 of them learn that they have developed the disease and more than 12,100 die of it.
- Breast cancers at an early stage of development at the time of diagnosis have a survival rate of more than 90%.
Among the thousands of French women who develop breast cancer every year, more than 80% will live beyond 10 years after their disease thanks to medical and scientific progress. Many therefore resume their professional activity, and suffer discrimination related to their state of health.
Denial of increase
According to the Canto Unicancer study, the greatest losses perceived by women when resuming their professional activity are:
– for 50% the loss of liability;
– for 49% the loss of benefits;
– for 45% the end of the promotion or the refusal of a raise;
– for 13% the demotion;
– for 7% the mutation or the change of unwanted pose.
Who are the most discriminated against?
“The analyzes carried out using the CANTO cohort make it possible to better understand who the people reporting this discrimination are. In particular, these are women who, all other things being equal, have an overall poor state of health following treatment, and have been absent from work longer than others”, explains Agnès Dumas, sociologist and research fellow at INSERM. They are also women who initially work in the private sector and in rather stressful jobs. “The type of contract (CDD, CDI, other) did not seem to have an impact on the perception of this discrimination. On the other hand, the results show that the fact of working in a small company (< 50 employees) protects against perceived discrimination ", continues the scientist.
A previous survey conducted in France on a representative sample of nearly 2,000 people with cancer showed that 22% of former patients reported some form of discrimination in their employment following the occurrence of a pathology (loss of responsibility, loss benefits, promotion or increase refused, etc.).
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