2007 was the European Year of Equal Opportunities. This should have meant a boon for the HALDE, France's High Authority to Fight Against Discrimination and promote Equal Opportunities. But it turns out that not much has changed since 2005, when the country adopted a wide-sweeping equal opportunities law. Critics say that a sticking point is statistics. It's illegal to keep ethnicity or race statistics in France, which makes it hard to count who is being hired (or not).

This piece looks at some of the problems France has with ensuring that everyone, particularly people of color, gets a fair shot at getting a job. It also serves as a followup to a piece I produced in late 2006 about anonymous CVs. I had interviewed a woman who had been looking for a job for three years and was not having any luck because she is black. I decided to call her up a year later to find out if things had improved. They haven't. Listen to the piece to find out more.