ABSTRACT
Abstract ideas beyond gender The tradition of France inclines towards generous, abstract ideas, but often shows a lesser concern for their actual fulfilment. Some authors characterize it as being above all a 'republican' country, compared for example to Great Britain or the USA, which are judged to be more 'democratic', with an emphasis on the pragmatic organization of people. France is a centralized country, with an often heavy bureaucracy, where the ideas of universality and laicite2 are important. It is interesting to note that great and abstract ideas such as these (and others like republique, democratic, nation, France, to name but four) are all of the feminine grammatical gender. This seems to illustrate the contradictory position of women in France: praised in theory and too often ill-treated in fact, with a sometimes coarse, at other times subtle, misogyny.
