21. An old French law banned women from wearing trousers unless riding a bike or holding the reigns of a horse until 2013
In 1800, France passed a law against women ‘dress[ing] like a man’. This peculiar law was intended to prevent women taking men’s jobs. If women could wear trousers rather than massive, flowing frocks, they could take better-paid and more interesting jobs! France modified the law in 1892 and 1900 to reflect changing times. These amendments allowed women to wear trousers when ‘holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse’. These changes preserved women’s modesty. Otherwise, women had to get express permission to ‘dress like a man’. In 2013, after decades of being rightly ignored, France formally repealed it.
