Segolene Royal, the woman who is likely to stand as the French Socialist party’s candidate for president in the upcoming elections, has linked her ascendancy to feminism.

The Telegraph, no doubt to further shock its readership about this strong, left-wing woman with a real chance of taking the top job, says:

Bathed in a pink light at the Municipal Hall on Paris’s Left Bank, the 53-year-old mother-of-four announced: “Together we are opening a beautiful page in the history of France. A new hope has risen in France, like a gathering wave that can only grow.

“There is a strong correlation between the status of a woman and the state of justice or injustice in a country.”

As Miss Royal, who has never married but is the civil partner of the Socialist leader François Hollande, strode along a mini-catwalk into the rows of some 1,500 Socialists shouting “Segolene – President”, there was even a mention of Olympe de Gouges, a pre-Revolution feminist.

Miss Royal said: “More than two centuries after Olympe de Gouges, your decision to choose a woman to lead the battle of ideas and to incarnate hope is a truly revolutionary gesture.”

Posted by Jess McCabe on 29 November 2006, at 8:52 AM