Look who's wearing the pants now A young woman on the street in Montmartre, Paris, wearing pants. Picture: Thinkstock IT is now impossible for women wearing pants in Paris to be arrested. That's right, previously if you strutted the streets of the French capital in pants you were risking the possibility of walking right into trouble, and into a jail cell. Under the 200-year-old law, which has finally been revoked, women had to ask police for special permission to "dress as men" in Paris, the UK's Telegraph reported. Weird laws that could trap unaware travellers Those who didn't risked being taken into custody. That is, unless "the woman was holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse" - according to amendments made to the law in 1892 and 1909. There had been repeated attempts to repeal the law over the years, and it was officially overturned on January 31 by Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights. It took so long to get rid of the law as it "wasn't a priority." However, when a member of the conservative UMP party protested on the basis the law "could injure our modern sensibilities," action was finally taken. "This ordinance is incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men, which are listed in the Constitution, and in France's European commitments," Ms Vallaud-Belkacem said when repealing the law. From that incompatibility follows the implicit abrogation of the ordinance.