March 19, 1986

President Francois Mitterrand today asked a longtime political rival, Mayor Jacques Chirac of Paris, to form a new Government. Mr. Chirac, emerging from a two-hour meeting with the President, did not say if he would accept the task. ''I was called by the President of the Republic to a wide-ranging discussion on the formation of a new Government,'' Mr. Chirac said upon returning to his office at the Paris City Hall this evening. ''I told the President of the Republic that I would give him my answer within the shortest possible time.''

''I told the President of the Republic that I would give him my answer within the shortest possible time.'' -Jacques Chirac, after being asked to form the next French Government. [ A1:3. ]

MARKING a major shift, the United States Labor Department has reported that women now hold the majority of professional jobs in the country, after edging out men by 29,000 jobs last month. ''This is a historic milestone,'' said Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, commissioner of the New York region of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ''Men are no longer the majority among the professional workers in this country.'' Men's traditional dominance of some professions -such as medicine, law and engineering - continues, Mr. Ehrenhalt said. But women have made sufficient gains in those fields over the last several years to gain the overall majority in February in the nearly 50 professional occupations surveyed by the bureau, he said.

An article on Sunday about private business schools reported that New York State was examining complaints involving their recruiting.

The girl who wrote an essay about how much she hated her parents did not get in. Neither did the boy whose main extracurricular activity was spiders. On the other hand, the bright daughter of a famous television producer was waved through. So was the California student who spends his spare time restoring a 1967 Camaro and working at a car wash. A boy who dances ballet and ''pursues knowledge like a bulldog,'' according to his high school counselor, was put on the waiting list.