PARIS, Oct 20, 2009 (AFP) - French women are finally sneaking their way into France's "Who's Who", though first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is not in the 2009 edition.

Photo: AFP

Bruni-Sarkozy was asked to fill in a standard entry listing biographical details but never answered, said Antoine Hebrard, publisher of "Who's Who in France".

"We wrote to her but got radio silence," Hebrard told AFP.

Only 16 percent of the 2009 entries are women, but that is still up from four percent in 1980 and just two percent in the first founding 1953 edition.

Women among the 1,084 new names on the power list include the head of the middle ages museum Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, Anne Hidalgo, deputy mayor of Paris, and Cecile Duflot, leader of the Greens party.

Among the new men are the head of the left wing CGT trade union Bernard Thibault, hand and face graft specialist Laurent Lantieri and avant-garde chef Thierry Marx.

The country's taste for fashion and cuisine figures prominently in the book, with the inclusion of Dior men's designer Kris Van Assche, the head of John Galliano, Pierre Denis, as well as a leading Paris butcher, Hugo Desnoyer.