Stung with stories of discrimination and volatile suburban ghettos, France has come up with a new weapon to fight racism, sexism and ageism in the job market.

Armed with a degree in human resources and abundant self-confidence, Saïd Hammouche was about to apply for jobs a few years ago, when one of his professors suggested he rewrite his resume. “If you really want to get a job,” the professor told him, “why don’t you change that North African first name?” Mr. Hammouche refused. He has since gone on to create his own company in Paris.

Names matter in France. The wrong one could mean no job interviews, no job, no hopes of advancement. Major government studies have confirmed that job seekers with foreign-sounding first names get stuck on the social ladder, a prejudice that many French people of Arab or African origin confirm with their own stories of rejection.

Stung by accounts of discrimination and last fall’s riots in the impoverished suburban ghettos, France has come up with a new plan to help job-hunters overcome racism, sexism and other prejudice in the job market. To outflank any recruiters who might summarily reject an Ali over an Alain, the government now requires companies to set up internal systems to hide an applicant’s personal data from the eyes of managers who initially review job applications.

The conventional wisdom in France for generations was that a properly prepared CV should include not just school and work experience, but a photograph and personal details about the applicant, such as their marital status and, if they have children, how many and how old.

The new law applies only to companies with 50 or more employees and has yet to be implemented by more than a handful of employers. But the idea of the anonymous CV, or curriculum vitae, is seen as a small but significant step toward fulfilling the French ideal of equality and reducing the 40 percent unemployment rate in some of the most desperate immigrant neighborhoods.

“We’re not saying this is the solution to the problem,” said Alain Brunel, a human resources manager for the insurance giant AXA France. “But the fact is that a lot of candidates don’t even get the first interview. With the anonymous CV, at least we can bring about that first contact.”

Since 2005, AXA, which has 15,500 employees in France, has been running an experimental program using anonymous CVs with software it developed. Any resume sent to the AXA website is routed to an internal computer system that masks the name, home address, email address, date of birth and sex. That information is restored only when a candidate passes a preliminary review and comes in for an interview.

The company has hired about 600 people using this method and took on proportionately more women and people over 50 than in past years. But AXA has no way to gauge whether it has hired a more diverse workforce, Mr. Brunel said, because French law forbids the collection of ethnic or racial data on individuals.

The anonymous CV is a long way from the American model of affirmative action, which many French consider an affront to their principles of egalitarianism. Critics of the new law say it does not address the fundamental problem of racist attitudes or oblige employers to diversify their workforce. “We have to change the mentality of the recruiters,” said Mr. Hammouche, now 34 and the director of a one-year-old recruitment company that places people from the disadvantaged suburbs. Instead of disguising an applicant’s family origins, foreign-sounding name or address, he said he favors presenting each candidate openly. “We show the recruiters who the candidates are,” he said. “You have to help them employ a diverse workforce by demonstrating the merit of candidates from the cités.”

Meanwhile, Monster.fr for instance, one of the most popular Internet job-search services, still tells its French users to list their marital status and, if they have children, whether they have full time or part time nannies. That information is important to recruiters, the site advises, because it indicates how mobile or “available” an applicant would be on the job. The site also advises resume-writers with “foreign-sounding” names to make sure to “clarify” their situation by also including their nationality on the resume.