Chirac condom move proves a flop

Chirac's campaign team is seeking to woo women voters

PARIS, France -- A bid to use female condoms to boost French President Jacques Chirac's image with women ahead of May's presidential elections appears to have flopped.

Chirac's campaign spokeswoman Roselyne Bachelot decided to mark International Women's Day by inaugurating France's first female condom machine in central Paris.

But the plan designed to bolster the incumbent's feminist credentials backfired when it sparked protests and women complained the female condoms, which cost around two euros ($1.76), were three times the price of the versions made for men.

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The AIDS awareness group Act Up also denounced the event as a publicity stunt and said the conservative Chirac was "using the vagina as an electoral ploy."

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Bachelot unveiled the new condom machines -- blue for men, pink for women -- at a metro station, one of five in Paris that are now equipped with them.

The female condom, a sac-like device inserted by the woman before sex, has been available in some countries for several years.

Bachelot, slightly suspect in conservative circles because she was the only right-wing deputy to support a "gay marriage" bill passed by the left-wing government, swept aside taboos over the female condom and dismissed suggestions it was "noisy."

Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, his chief rival in the two-round election ending on May 5, both used International Women's Day as a way to lobby for the key female vote.