Christine Lagarde, a top lawyer and a former champion synchronised swimmer, was yesterday appointed France's first woman economy minister.
She was one of several women appointed by Nicolas Sarkozy in a rethink of his cabinet and junior ministerial roles. In an attempt to confound Socialists and disprove critics who say he is divisive, the new rightwing president invited more figures from the left to join his team.
He appointed an outspoken feminist campaigner of north African descent to address the fall-out from the riots on suburban housing estates.
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A poll by the daily Le Parisien yesterday found more people thought he had been weakened by the Socialists' strong showing.*
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Among his junior ministers, Mr Sarkozy appointed one of France's most outspoken feminist campaigners, the leftwing Fadela Amara, as secretary of state for towns and cities. She once asked Jacques Chirac to pardon the young teenagers arrested after the urban riots of 2005 as a "gesture of reconciliation" with the suburbs.
Rama Yade, 30, a rising star and one of the few black politicians in Mr Sarkozy's UMP party, was appointed junior minister for foreign affairs and human rights. The daughter of a Senegalese diplomat, she was born in Africa but grew up on a housing estate outside Paris.
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Only five weeks after taking office, President Sarkozy faces a serious outbreak of grumbling in his own ranks. The parliamentary elections last weekend were not the sweeping triumph that the centre-right had been promised. President Sark-ozy's reshuffled and expanded government has cast itself open more than ever to the left and to the centre, to women and to racial minorities.
One in three of all the posts in the government have gone to politicians associated with other parties. Three of the top five posts in government - finance, defence and interior - have gone to women. The economics minister is a woman for the first time, Christine Lagarde.
Two high-profile junior ministerial posts have gone to young women of immigrant origin. One of them, Rama Yade, 30, a striking woman born in Senegal, is already known as "Sarkozy's Condoleezza Rice". She has been plucked from relative obscurity to become minister of state for human rights at the Foreign Ministry.
All of this may be brilliant public relations, and a long overdue opening of French government to women and minorities. But it leaves a bitter taste with young, male, white centre-right politicians who have been denied jobs in government.
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