As pockets attained a clear gender association with men, they carried with them more than just functional meanings. Women were well aware of the advantages that pockets provided men, not only in terms of fashion but also in terms of politics. “Until woman consents to have as many pockets as man . . . her acquisition of political quality and the right of suffrage will amount to nothing,” argued an article in the Baltimore Sun. A person’s clothes were seen as a reflection of their fitness for citizenship, and pockets were a marker of rationality, efficiency, and independence — qualities that were deemed necessary for voting and that women’s clothes lacked.
Indeed, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton lamented the sight of “an educated woman wearing a dress that is destitute of a pocket!,” seeing the lack of pockets as a hindrance to women’s progress.
By the early twentieth century, pockets became synonymous with the demand for woman’s suffrage. In 1910, the American Ladies Tailors’ Association introduced a “suffragette suit” that included a bifurcated skirt and seven or eight pockets, “all in sight and all easy to find.” Suffragists wholeheartedly adopted the style, seeing it as a sartorial feminist statement. The association of pockets with suffragists’ agitation for the vote became so prevalent that every outfit that contained multiple and visible pockets was deemed as a “suffragist costume.”
In her 1914 column “Are Women People?,” the suffragist Alice Duer Miller published a short piece titled “Why We Oppose Pockets for Women.” In it, Miller mockingly detailed anti-suffragist arguments, substituting the word “vote” in “pockets” in order to show the absurdity of depriving women of their rights. Despite her sarcastic tone, Miller acknowledged that both “pockets” and “votes” had the potential to enable an independent and mobile lifestyle, connecting sartorial freedom to political demands.
Duer’s piece “Why We Oppose Pockets for Women” (Wikisource)
By the mid-20th century, women designers including Elsa Schiaparelli, Clare McCardell, and Bonnie Cashin introduced pockets to their designs, arguing for women’s entitlement to that freedom. “I hardly ever make a skirt without pockets,” confessed McCardell. “Because I noticed men always look so happy with their hand in their pockets. So I thought, ‘why shouldn’t women have pockets too?’”
Yet even as women gained more presence in the workforce and the civic realm, pockets continued to be an issue. The WAC uniforms, despite their aim of providing women with functional clothing, only contained faux breast pocket flaps, requiring the soldiers to carry with them a mandated leather purse.