Why the lack of pockets on women's clothes is an economic issue
Money travels invisibly on the male body - not the female
Have you noticed how pockets are marketed to women as if they were ROCKET SCIENCE?
I recently bought a pencil skirt and the company told me all about how “innovative” the design was because it had pockets.
But COME ON.
Tailors on the Savile Row devised a standard male suit with 17 pockets over 100 years ago. Shouldn’t we be able to put a few decent pockets into a skirt in 2021 without having to go on AND ON about it as if we’d just solved nuclear fusion?
On the other hand: When it comes to women and money there is no story more symbolic than that of trousers and pockets. Women successfully fought for their right to wear trousers. But somehow the pockets didn’t follow.
Women’s clothing still either have no pockets or very small pockets. Women are often angry about this, but somehow it doesn’t seem to change.
And what are pockets for? They are for carrying THE MONEY.
Isn’t this the perfect metaphor for the state of things?
Women have reached formal equality with men in many spheres (the trousers!), but we are still far from economic equality (the pockets!).
Nowhere in the world do women as a group have more money than men as a group. My native country Sweden is often thought to be a beacon of gender equality/ ”the Saudi Arabia of feminism”. But even in Sweden the gender pay gap is roughly the same as in comparable economies. Women earn less, own less and have less access to financial resources. Yes, and here too women’s pockets are just as absent or impractical.
Our gendered relationship with money weirdly manifests itself in our gendered approach to clothing design. The man and the money he carries are one. Money travels invisibly on his body while it moves through the world and there’s an easy naturalness to the whole thing.
In the Victorian era when the modern idea of trousers with pockets for men emerged, a need to distinguish men from women played a big part in guiding the fashion. Women didn’t need to carry money. They were not supposed to be financially independent or wield that type of power.
In The Wind in The Willows, when Toad wears a dress in order to escape prison, the main problem he encounters is that he can’t reach into his pockets for money. He is in the female gender role so he hasn’t got access to that kind of financial power.
Instead of money travelling invisibly on the female body a woman has to carry a handbag.
This means two things:
It makes it harder for her to exercise financial power. Think of all the time you spend finding your purse inside your bag…
You end up as a packhorse for everyone else’s things. You suddenly also carry your husband’s pills/your child’s teddy/a week’s worth of juice cartons in there.
And again, isn’t this the perfect metaphor?
Women have a harder time exercising financial power and accessing financial resources (digging around for that purse in there…).
AND women are expected to perform the economic role of chief carer (dragging around the pills, the teddies, the juice cartons…).
Now will all of this change if we demand the pockets and ditch the handbags?
I can’t guarantee it.
But it’s worth a try. I see it as a “feminist fashion Feng Shui cure” for the economic system.
And it’s at least as scientific as a lot of economic theory.
Happy Thursday!
Katrine
PS. Readers in the US might be interested to know that my book Mother of Invention is now available for US pre-order. Hurray! What do you think of the cover? (My mum doesn’t like it.) But I do.
You are brilliant.
Even when we do have pockets, they aren't big enough for anything! The front pocket of his Levi's will hold his phone with room to spare. My jeans pocket holds the bottom half of my phone.
When we have The Revolution - we will have pockets.