This is a revision of an article I first wrote in 2022 originally called The Politics of Pockets, but I felt a rename calling to feminism rather than politics felt more aligned. I also wanted to go a little more in depth into how pockets and power/ freedom are tied together.
Did you know that pockets weren’t always common place in clothing, especially in women’s wear?
Now I hear you saying “we still don’t get pockets a lot of the time” and I know, we’ll get to that! First let me tell you a little history about the humble pocket.
The history of pockets is considered to be not only sexist but also political. Originally there was no such things as pockets. Everyone, men and women alike carried their belongings in a pouch they wore tied around their waist and under their clothes which they could access through small slits. It was in the late seventeenth century that men’s wear began to include sewn in pockets. Featured in waistcoats, jackets and trousers. Yet women still needed to carry their belongings in bags or pouches which were neither small nor light as they could carry a multitude of things including money, writing materials, sewing kits, keys, perfume bottles and even snuff boxes.
When the French Revolution rolled round the popular clothing styles with full and wide skirts with many yards of fabric slimmed down and became more figure hugging. This more slender silhouette was on trend and this of course meant no room for the pocket-bags but women still did not get pockets!
So women began carrying small highly decorated bags called reticules. And soon after this came the chatelaines which were decorative chains that held all the necessities on display. The name chatelaine comes from the medieval words for keeper of the castle. The significance of this might be easily overlooked, and truly was both a positive and negative thing for women. They originally represented a woman’s power over her home, were a status symbol of authority, but also on the flip side showed that she belonged at home with her domestic duties. And while having all the necessities at hand was convenient, they were noisy to wear and you wouldn’t be able to approach anyone without their knowing. We must also note that while pocket allows someone to carry things privately, a chatelaine had all your hobbies, work and personal items on display, and gave the impression that women’s places were in the home and they didn’t need to travel too far. The freedom for women to travel unaccompanied was definitely limited and so the clanking chatelaine slowly moved out of fashion and became something one only wore at home. 
Of course we know the next step was for handbags to arrive on the scene. As they started appearing in the late 1800’s, they began a whole new era for women’s freedom, and wardrobes. They allowed women to travel more independently, but also the need for a matching bag for each outfit began. In the early 20th century large bags with shoulder straps became a symbol for the working woman, and purse for night time were made from luxurious satins and silks and had jewels encrusted in them.
And as we know today, the hand bag industry is massive, providing bags of all shapes, colours and styles for every outfit you could ever dream up.
So when did women start to see pockets sewn into their clothing?
During the 1800’s the Rational Dress Society, and the Women’s Rights Movements worked together to bring more functionality into women’s clothing - condemning anything that impeded movement or was injuring to health - such as tight corsets, overly heavy gowns and hoops, bustles and overtly extravagant decoration. They helped to create the “reformed dress” which was a baggy legged pantaloon under a knee length skirt, and also the divided skirt or culotte, which allowed them to cycle and participate in great range of recreational activities such as tennis. There were instruction manuals on how to sew pockets into your skirts and small, discreet pockets began to appear again in women’s clothing. Significantly the “suffragette suit” featured as many as 6 pockets!
But it wasn’t until around world war 1 when women started working in roles that had traditionally been held by men that pockets really came into women’s clothing. The circumstances necessitated that women’s fashion become more functional, so many things were adapted from men’s clothing and you can see that as women started wearing trousers and suits. Once the men returned unfortunately women were expected to go back to form fitting and “flattering” clothing - with again little space for pockets.
The introduction of synthetic materials combined with women in the work place brought a new era of mass produced fashion, as women were no longer all at home seeing for themselves or their families. And the industry of fashion wanted to cut costs where possible, as true today as it was back then, and so if garments didn’t need a lining, it wasn’t added, and since women had handbags, their pockets weren’t considered strictly necessary and so were either small or skipped entirely.
Christian Dior once summed it up nicely “Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration.” And I think this speaks to fashion as a whole. Women’s clothes have long been an expression of identity, controlled largely by trends and societal opinions on what is aesthetically pleasing, while men’s clothes have always been focused firstly on function, and then form, heralding back to the days of women being more subdued and “set in their places”.
Women’s pockets are, as we know, significantly smaller than male pockets- a survey conducted in 2018 suggests they are as much as 48% shorter and 6.5% narrower! Or worse - the pockets are fake! Either way we still have to carry a handbag - and while a handbag might be nice - in the words of Charlotte P Gilman “… a bag is not a pocket.”