16 May 2012, the day President Hollande appointed Najat Vallaud-Belkacem as Minister for Women’s Rights

16 May 2012, the day President Hollande appointed Najat Vallaud-Belkacem as Minister for Women’s Rights, may come to be viewed as an immensely significant date in European, and my, history. A turning point. She has come to our attention before, of course, when on January 31st she repealed the 200-year-old law forbidding women to wear trousers in Paris. “On January 31, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France’s minister of women’s rights, made it officially impossible to arrest a woman for wearing trousers in the French capital.
The law required women to ask police for special permission to “dress as men” in Paris, or risk being taken into custody.
In 1892 and 1909 the rule was amended to allow women to wear trousers, “if the woman is holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse.”
The law was kept in place until now, despite repeated attempts to repeal it, in part because officials said the unenforced rule was not a priority, and part of French “legal archaeology.”” How we smiled then, without realising quite how ambitious this damnably delectable young lady was going to prove to be.