France has moved a step closer to banning discrimination in the workplace against hairstyles, reports BBC News. A bill has been approved in the National Assembly and will now be debated in the Senate. The law will bar employers from requiring hair to be straightened and for afros, dreadlocks and braids to be covered.  Its author hopes the law will support those, particularly black people, who have faced workplace hostility. The bill does not specifically target race-based discrimination, though that is the law's primary motivation. It will also protect blondes and redheads, as well as bald victims of what it calls "hair prejudice".

It was proposed by Olivier Serva, an MP from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, who presented an American study which pointed out that a quarter of black women said they had been ruled out for jobs because of how they wore their hair at the interview.

Critics of the bill say existing French law already bans the compilation of personal data about an individual's race or ethnic background on the basis of the French Republic's "universalist" principles. But anti-racism campaigners say the fact that the bill does not include the term "racism" is problematic, given many including public figures have faced negative comments online because of the way their natural hair looked. They say that the main targets of hair discrimination are black people.