From WaPo:
PARIS, May 18 -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy named women to nearly half of his cabinet positions Friday and designated the founder of Doctors Without Borders, a Socialist, as his foreign minister.
The appointments reflect Sarkozy's pledge to diversify the top echelons of the French government with greater numbers of women and representatives from opposition political parties. More than half of the cabinet members are familiar political faces who served as ministers in President Jacques Chirac's government.
The 15-member cabinet -- seven women and eight men -- is half the size of previous governments, part of Sarkozy's efforts to streamline the bloated French bureaucracy.
The cabinet held its first meeting within hours of being named, in keeping with Sarkozy's plan to bring more dynamism to a government that had become sluggish and unresponsive to the public.
Tags: Politics, Sarkozy, French Cabinet
