Paris trouser ban for women could be lifted

A law banning women from wearing trousers in Paris may finally be lifted more than two centuries after first being enforced. The curious rule was first introduced in late 1799 by Paris' police chief, and stipulated than any Parisienne wishing to "dress like a man" must seek special permission from the city's main police station.

This makes the laissez-faire French capital theoretically more hardline than Islamic states like Sudan in the fashion stakes. But a group of ten French MPs has now submitted a draft bill to parliament to remove the law, which has survived repeated attempts to repeal it. The MPs say the trouser ban is "obsolete" and should be "de-legislated".

In 1892, it was slightly relaxed thanks to an amendment which said trousers were permitted "as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse". Then in 1909, the decree was further watered down when an extra clause was added to allow women in trousers on condition they were "on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars". In 1969, amid a global movement towards gender equality, the Paris council asked the city's police chief to bin the decree. His response was: "It is unwise to change texts which foreseen or unforeseen variations in fashion can return to the fore."

The latest attempt to remove the outmoded rule was in 2003, when a Right-wing MP from President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party wrote to the minister in charge of gender equality. The minister's response was: "Disuse is sometimes more efficient than (state) intervention in adapting the law to changing morays." Given that trousers are compulsory for Parisian policewomen, they are, in theory, all breaking the law.