Sarkozy's Sexist Blunder?

Just days before France takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has committed something of a fashion faux pas.

He sent all 577 members of the country's national assembly a rather splendid black leather attaché case containing a pencil, a notepad and.....a light grey tie.

Now quite what the 105 women who sit in the Assembly are expected to do with a tie rather makes the mind boggle - give it to their partners perhaps.

But surely Sarkozy of all people could have ensured that there was a little more thought given as to how appropriate a present it would be.

All right, so it's not the story to end all stories, but it comes as rather a surprise from a man who came to office promising gender equality in politics - and delivering on it as far as cabinet appointments are concerned.

Of the 15-strong team, seven are women, and they've not just been given the traditionally perceived "softer" jobs in health and education. Michèle Alliot-Marie is the first woman to hold the post of interior minister, as is Christine Lagarde at finance. And Rachida Dati is the first woman from a non-European immigrant background, and the first Arab, to occupy a key ministerial position as justice minister.

Add to that the fact that thrice-married Sarkozy has a reputation as something of a lover of women (if the recent exposé of his former wife Cecilia is anything to go by) then offering a tie seems just a little "gauche" (for a man from the Right) to put it mildly.

As some of the women parliamentarians from across the political spectrum lined up for a photo-op "en cravate", one Socialist party member, Aurélie Filipetti, commented that it was yet again proof of how much (male) chauvinism there was still in politics.

Perhaps though it was for Sarkozy a (brief)case of "damned if he does and damned if he doesn't." Had he instead requested scarves to be given to the women rather than ties, would he then have been accused of sexism?

Better still, he could have avoided the issue entirely by offering everyone a classy unisex tee-shirt

There again as one bright wag in the comments section of the national daily Le Figaro wrote, just a few weeks after mourning the passing of Yves Saint Laurent - the designer who so famously made wearing trousers for women fashionable - perhaps Sarkozy was also looking to take over the mantle by empowering women to wear ties.

Is there no end to this man's talents? Europe and the world will soon find out.