The official guardians of the French language have ended centuries of male linguistic dominance by allowing feminine words for all professions.
The notoriously conservative Academie Francaise, which polices the language and has long resisted change, said there was now "no obstacle in principle" to the wholesale feminisation of job titles.
The male-dominated Academie had previously fiercely opposed change, branding attempts at "inclusive writing" in government documents as an "aberration" that put French "in mortal danger". One, novelist Dominique Bona, had pointedly complained that it was no accident that the masculine was "chosen as the dominant gender" in French.
It said the debate about the use of the -eure ending in docteure, for example, "does not constitute a threat to the structure of the language as long as the final 'e' was not pronounced". However, French speakers in neighbouring Belgium and Switzerland have long ago found ways around the problems.
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