> From The Monday Review, 5/11/98:
> >
> > 11. FRENCH FEMINISTS IN REVOLT
> > Emily Eakin reviews the current attitudes and confrontations of
> > the French feminist movement, which has evidently become more
> > activist. The Academie Francaise has recently published in the
> > newspaper *Le Figaro* a letter addressed to President Jacques
> > Chirac describing "a matter at the highest levels of the State
> > constituting an assault on the French language... Certain women
> > in your administration have decided to call themselves Madame la
> > Ministre..." The apparent problem is that the female ministers
> > have conjoined the feminine article "la" to the masculine noun
> > "ministre", and the French Academy, the supreme redoubt of French
> > scholars, is dismayed and angry. The French feminist movement, as
> > it exists today, is apparently a loosely organized campaign by
> > feminist politicians and scholars to bring French women into
> > positions of power in numbers equal to men. They are called
> > "paritaires", after their ostensible slogan, "liberte, egalite,
> > parite" (accent acute at all endings). The French magazine
> > *L'Express* recently observed that "of the world's democracies,
> > France is by a long shot the one that most mistreats its women."
> > Author Eakin concludes that parity for French women will probably
> > arrive at the expense of certain French attitudes. In the
> > newspaper *Le Monde*, for example, Madame la Ministre has already
> > become standard usage.
> > (Lingua Franca April 1998) (The Monday Review 11 May 98)
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