The twin stereotypes about gender in France are wholly contradictory: on the one hand, they have titanic feminist theorists, from Simone de Beauvoir via Helene Cixious to Virginie Despentes, a tranche of thinkers so heavyweight that the rest of Europe couldn't match it if we pooled all our feminists. On the other hand, the mainstream culture looks quite sexist. The women seem bedevilled by standards that are either unattainable (to be a perfect size eight) or demeaning in themselves (to be restrained, demure, moderate in all things, poised; a host of qualities that all mean "quiet"). But this dichotomy is impossible. Either the feminist intellectuals had no impact, or the sexism is a myth.

Elsa Dorlin, associate professor at the Sorbonne, currently a visiting professor in California, dispatches the first quantity pretty swiftly. "French feminism is a kind of American construction," she says. "Figures like Helene Cixous are not really recognised in France. In civil society, there is a hugely anti-feminist mentality."

The standard structural markers of inequality are all in place: the figure proffered for a pay gap is a modest 12%, but this is what is known as "pure discrimination", the difference in wages between a man and a woman in exactly the same job, with the same qualifications. When the Global Pay Gap survey came out at Davos, France came a shocking 46th, way behind comparable economies (Britain is 15th, Germany 13th), and behind less comparable ones (Kazakhstan scored higher).

Female representation in politics is appalling, due to very inflexible rules about the pool from which the political class is drawn. All politicians come from the highly competitive set of graduate schools Les Grandes Ecoles (apart from Nicolas Sarkozy) which, until recently, had only a smattering of women, and none at all in Polytechnique (it is sponsored by the Ministry of Defence: women are now allowed in).

When there is a high-profile female face in politics, it is indicative of some force other than equality. At the local elections last week the two big winners were the Socialists, whose leader is Martine Aubry (daughter of Jacques Delors), and the National Front, led by Marine Le Pen (daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen). So what we're seeing there is not so much the smashing of the glass ceiling as a freak shortage of sons in a political culture so stitched-up that it's effectively hereditary.

As for the lived experience of being female, it sounds like hard work, even as described by women who say they love it. Thomasine Jammot, a cross-cultural trainer (who teaches travelling business people how they might overcome cultural misinterpretation, on their own or someone else's part) says that she does not feel discriminated against, nor objectified. "There is a permanent ode to women in France," she explains. "We are loved very well." But then she continues: "There are many things you can't do, as a woman, in France. You can't be coarse or vulgar, or drink too much, or smoke in the street. I would never help myself to wine." "How would you get more wine?" I ask, baffled. "At the end of an evening, I might shake my glass at my husband. But no, I would never touch the bottle."

Sometimes it sounds not so much sexist as so intensely gendered that even men must feel the weight of constraint, of expectation. But at least they won't have to do the laundry as well.

Bérengére Fiévet, 35, is a single mother and student in psychology, as well as a part-time teacher. "Nothing has changed much in the past 20 years. For men, women are just women: sex objects. Your appearance will change everything, even for an interview for a job. In France you employ anyone you like. If the interviewer thinks that you're too fat or ugly: dommage for you!"

This is underlined by a bizarre new initiative, Action Relooking, in which a handful of lucky unemployed French women are given a government makeover, in order to look pretty for a job interview.

"Women feel the pressure to maintain their 'physique' more in France than anywhere else in Europe," says Nicole Fiévet, 63, a senior council official. "The pressure comes from society itself, not only from men but women. I am still a bad example to talk about it. I spend my life to look after my garden more than me. As a result, I never found a husband."

It is against this backdrop – conservatism and rigidity, rather than an all-out war between the sexes – that a bitter struggle has developed which started with a schism between feminists but extends far beyond.

In 2002 it was made illegal to "passively solicit". Mainstream feminists – politicians, unionists, various figures who had grouped together in 1996 under the title CNDF – supported the law; as prostitution constituted violence against women it obviously should be outlawed. Activists countered that this denied prostitutes even the patchy safety of a busy street. They said, furthermore, that this was tacit racism, as these prostitutes tended to be from eastern Europe or Africa, and many were deported following the clampdown (even though there was a caveat offering clemency to any woman who named her trafficker; none ever did).

But underneath the practical injustice, there was a more pressing misogyny. Nellie, a member of the group Les Tumultueuses (she declines to give her surname in case it damages her position as a school teacher), explains: "How do you recognise someone who is 'passively soliciting'? By definition, she isn't doing anything. So you know her because her skirt is too short, or she is wearing fishnets, or she has too much make-up on. When you're not wearing enough clothing, you're a prostitute. When you're wearing too much, you're a Muslim. That's where we end up, if we judge people on how they dress."

Soon enough, that is where the system ended up: in 2004 the ban on the veil came up, on the same grounds, that it represented a violence against women.

Again, establishment feminists put up no opposition as, in the end, it is pretty sexist, to have your dress code determined by the sexual paranoia of your menfolk. But this, again, had a terrible punitive effect on the women it purported to protect – in this case, girls were denied education if they continued to wear a veil.

Dorlin remarks: "You see here the instrumentalisation of the rights of women in the name of the fight against insecurity [terrorism]. I'm a feminist activist. I don't want to say, feminism is responsible for this situation. But we have to do a critical analysis of internal racism in feminism."

There are scenes that cropped up as this legislation was going through that beggar belief: Les Ecoles pour Tous et Tout was a loose collective campaigning for girls who wore the veil not to get kicked out of school. They wanted to join the demonstration on International Women's Day but were disallowed until some plan was devised to hide them behind women who weren't wearing veils. They had the street cleaners coming up behind them, as if they were literally feminism's dirty secret.

Nellie remembers: "In 2003 we had huge strikes about pensions, about pay, about conditions, there was so much solidarity. Suddenly, the next year when this ban came in, that was gone. I lost friends, teachers were fighting in the staff room.

"One teacher said to me 'If I can save only one, it's OK with me if 100 are sent out'. I was shouting, 'You're a teacher! You are here to teach'. And he said, "I repeat it and I mean it."

Ann, also from Les Tumulteuses said simply, of the veil: "On the right, they say, 'that's Islam coming to France, we're going to lose our identity.' On the Left, they say, 'this is against women's rights.' But we should be outraged to see a girl be forced out of school. We should all be outraged."

In April, a new ban on the niqab, passed last September, will come into force. Would this have happened in a country where it was less routine, less state-sponsored, to judge a woman on her appearance? I think not, but it's hard to prove.

Some names have been changed

Additional research by Elodie Gutierrez