French women “wear the pants” at last

Paris chiefs have finally told women they can ‘wear the trousers’ after a 213-year-old ban on wearing such clothing was revoked as “incompatible’’ with contemporary French society.

Back in 1800 law-makers had originally issued the order forcing women to seek permission from police if they wanted to ‘dress like a man’.

Of course, this never stopped 19^th century French author Georges Sand from dressing as a man, complete with lit cigar in her mouth, to foster her spectacular writing career, which she thought would benefit from her being seen as a male writer rather than female.

The order was later amended in 1892 and 1909 to allow women to wear trousers if they were ‘holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of orse’ but it officially remained a statute on the books.

Now French politician, women’s rights minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, has decriminalised potentially thousands of Parisian women by saying that the law is incompatible with modern French values.

‘This order was aimed, first of all, at limiting the access of women to certain offices or occupations by preventing them from dressing in the manner of men,’’ she said in a prepared statement.

‘This order is incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men. From that incompatibility stems the implicit abrogation of the order.’

The order was originally issued following the French Revolution when Parisian women demanded the right to wear trousers in their attempt to win equality.

At the time, working-class revolutionaries were known as ‘sans-culottes’ for wearing trousers instead of the silk-knee breeches (culottes) favoured by the ruling classes.

The regime that took power after the monarchy was deposed is thought to have been afraid that true equality for women would undermine its power. It used orders like the banning of trousers as a way of keeping them in their place.

Meanwhile, in contemporary French politics, the manner of dress of French housing minister Cecile Duflot has provoked comment – and media coverage.

The 37-year-old Green housing minister was criticised last May for wearing jeans to the first cabinet meeting of Socialist President Francois Hollande’s new government. She was later subjected to jeers and wolf-whistles while wearing a floral summer dress in the National Assembly.

There was no question the law needed to be revoked when a number of other women also broke parliamentary protocol by wearing jeans during an extended debate recently over France’s planned legalisation of gay marriage.

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