She's French. She's female. And she is causing quite a stir. Christine Lagarde, the first woman finance minister for a G-8 nation, was rated the best minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government last month by one of France's top-selling newspapers. Not bad for a political newcomer who only two years ago was unknown outside legal and business circles, and who is vocally pro-market in a capitalism-wary nation.
It hasn't always been this easy.
In 1980s Paris, a law firm in the French capital told the young female applicant her sex disqualified her from high office. So Lagarde turned to Chicago-based law firm Baker & McKenzie, where she went on to become the firm's first female director in 1999.
She says her current appointment is 'a sign of change' in tradition-bound France.
'A lot of people have paid lip service to the principle of nondiscrimination,' she told The Associated Press on Monday from her office overlooking the Seine. Sarkozy, she says of her boss, is 'actually delivering on his promises.'
Lagarde, who has two teenage sons, is one of several women appointed to the government by Sarkozy after his election in May. Her promotion to a senior government post is likely to see her climb higher on Forbes magazine's list of the world's most powerful women, where she currently ranks No. 30.
She speaks fluent English and is known for colorful language and a sense of humor. Colleagues said she often packs a swimsuit in her suitcase on business trips and does yoga to relax.
Lagarde's brief she has said, is to facilitate France's comeback on the world stage.
Last month, the former trade executive provoked members of parliament by telling them it is time to abandon old habits and embrace an American-style work ethic.
To the outrage of France's many philosophers, she urged her countrymen to stop their endless ideological discussions and 'roll up your sleeves.' Citing Alexis de Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America,' she said French people need to work more and be better rewarded for hard work - with lower taxes.
It earned her the moniker 'the minister of the rich' by left-leaning Marianne magazine, but it didn't stop the popular daily Le Parisien from giving her a score of 15 out of 20 in a recent editorial rating. That was more than double her predecessor Jean-Louis Borloo, whose brief tenure at the Finance Ministry was cut short after a gaffe over taxes.
No such slip-ups for Lagarde, who quickly learned the importance of discretion in 2005 when she left her $600,000 a year job to become a junior trade minister in the government of then-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
In her first few days in office, she said what she thought about France's labor laws - that they were overly complicated and discouraged job creation - prompting a slap on the wrist as the new minister was told not to interfere in subjects outside her brief.
Those sentiments could still come back to haunt her when Sarkozy turns his attention this fall to France's labor laws, which he has vowed to shake up. Any changes must be negotiated with the nation's powerful trade unions, for whom she may need to adopt a softer approach. Already Lagarde had to back down this summer on a push to allow more stores to open Sundays.
'I'd advise her to be conciliatory,' said Jean-Christophe Caffet, an economist with Natixis in Paris.
Lagarde says she has no regrets about returning to 'serve the country,' a decision she made within hours.
'When someone as reputable as the president of the French Republic and the prime minister, when both say: 'Why don't you come back. You can help,' you don't even think about it. You just get on the next plane and come home,' she told the AP.
Two years on, the 51-year-old with a passion for jewelry holds the government's top economic post.
Despite having been initially recruited to government by a Sarkozy rival, she owes her latest promotion to the current president, who is keen to set economic policy himself. He invited himself to a meeting of European finance ministers in Brussels to defend France's budget policy, and is friendly with her chief of staff Stephane Richard.
'Clearly Sarkozy is setting the economic agenda,' said Jacques Cailloux, chief European economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland in London. Lagarde 'very much follows his line.'
When she is not jetting around the world defending French economic interests, Lagarde has sometimes dropped into classrooms to teach the benefits of global trade, teaching the next generation of French people not to fear globalization.
The recent mortgage crisis - spurred by worries over the degree to which bad U.S. housing loans could affect the rest of the world - reignited French fears of global capitalism. Yet Lagarde insisted Monday that it is a lesson for France that globalization is 'here to stay.'
It 'is something you have to cope with and for which you have to be prepared,' she said.
Global markets were spooked earlier this month when France's largest bank BNP Paribas announced that it was suspending three funds due to their exposure to U.S. subprime mortgages, made to individuals with weak credit. BNP Paribas is resuming trading in the funds this week.
Lagarde said she is waiting for U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's forecast for the U.S. economy to see 'what effects (the mortgage crisis) will have on the European and, as a result, the French economy.'
Keen to avoid any risk to France's fragile economic growth, Lagarde urged banks not to tighten credit for companies 'simply because it is time for them to finance investment.'
She also defended previous comments that the European Central Bank should reconsider a planned interest rate hike.
'I don't think it's offensive if governments express their views' about the bank's policy, she said, with her characteristic frankness.
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