Christel Gilles and Antoine Parent Active Aging and Pension Reform: The Gender Implications in France In the first section of this article, the authors, Christel Gilles and Antoine Parent, argue that in France, public policy and the pension system provide financial incentives favoring early retirement. The implementation of "bridge jobs" to facilitate the transition from full em- ployment to full retirement, could, in theory, lessen the long-term decline in employment rates of men and women. Gilles and Parent, in the second section, question the idea that rising labor force participation rates among women are adequate to narrow pension in- equalities between men and women. Regarding this point, we also note that since women's careers are generally shorter than men's and their labor income remains, on average, lower, an increase in female labor force participation would lead, in an occupational-based sys- tem, to a substitution effect between direct and indirect entitlements. The impact of this effect on pension gender inequalities remains uncertain. In the third section, the authors examine, from a gender perspective, other pension reform options that may, in theory, provide greater gender equality, but that are, in practice, far from the implementation phase. Introduction A major trend has gained strength over the past decades in France: the decline of the participation rate ~ of workers fifty-five-years-old. Despite a recent tick upward the employment rate among the fifty-five to sixty-four-year-old age group remains very low in France in contrast with OECD countries (39.3 percent versus 49.4 percent in 2002, OECD, 2004). The French Pension debates have focused on the question of the demographic ratio between the working and non-working popu- lations, as well as on the necessity to extend the working lifecycle. Various resolu- tions of the European Council have already gone in that direction defining a target of 50 percent in the employment rate among the population aged between fifty-five and sixty-four-years-old by 2010 (resolution of the Stockholm European Council of Christel Gilles is an economist, Matisse, University of Paris 1--Sorbonne. Antoine Parent is an associate professor of economics at the University of Paris 8, and researcher at MATISSE, University of Paris 1--Sorbonne.