The French Lift 200 Year Old Ban on Women Wearing Trousers in Paris

The law, put into service on the 17th of November in 1800, has now finally been overturned. According to the law, if a women wanted to wear "pantaloons, trousers, or other menswear," she would have to get permission from local police or else risk arrest. Some 100 years later, in 1909, the law was modified to allow women to wear pants if they were, "holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse." The law has mostly been ignored for the last 100 years, because it was determined that it was not a priority of the French government, and because it was considered a piece of "legal archaeology." France's minister of Women's Rights announced that the law was ,

 "incompatible with the principles of equality between men and women that are written into the constitution, as well as in France’s European engagements. It has absolutely no legal effect."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21329269