The body of legislation sometimes contains strange curiosities, which persist over time, testifying to a past era when societal issues were different and gender relations were conceived differently...

Thus, until a few days ago, a strange measure, almost charming as it was so obsolete (although completely unconstitutional) was still in force in Paris: the prohibition of women wearing trousers in public places without the permission of the prefect. This old ordinance of 16 Brumaire Year IX (7 November 1800) which threatened women guilty of " cross-dressing " with imprisonment has just been repealed.

It would have been funny if before that, women decided en masse to flood the prefecture with letters to ask for the famous authorization required by the authorities. In the end, habit and the evolution of morals have done the work of discrediting the sexist measure on their own, without targeted action to make demands.

The fact remains that the discourse held by the ordinance of 16 Brumaire, Year IX, is not without lessons, even for today. Because the stated intention of this text was to put in their place the Amazons of 1789 who had thought they could do anything after the Revolution. The short history of trousers perhaps says a little more about a certain temptation to preserve frozen gender relations even in the great movements of transformation.

Do the current controversies around quotas for women in governing bodies and the resistance sometimes observed to female leadership also contain a temptation to put the Amazons of 2013 in their place?