Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquila
If you are truly interested, the beginnings of "women wearing pants" was seen in the WWII when, as a result of many American men being at war, women began working in factories. In these environments dresses, and skirts, were a danger because they could be caught in machinery. So women wore men's pants while working. Working for less money and benefits; and facing sexual harrasment on the job ignited the women's liberation movement which began with sufferage.
So one could argue that women working is the root cause of this "evil" (if you believe it to be so).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin
Didn't women's lib start before WW2? More so around the teens and 20's of the 20th century?
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The women's suffrage movement started at least as far back as 1848, though the right to vote was not won until 1920.
According to this article:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activi...ge/history.htm
"After the Civil War, agitation by women for the ballot became increasingly vociferous. In 1869, however, a rift developed among feminists over the proposed 15th Amendment, which gave the vote to black men. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others refused to endorse the amendment because it did not give women the ballot. Other suffragists, however, including Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, argued that once the black man was enfranchised, women would achieve their goal. "
There were "feminists" and "women's libbers" long before there were women working in factories in pants. They were the main activists behind better schools, safer factories, child labor laws, and prohibition, among other things.
Many women and children lost their lives in factories for years prior to WWII in cotton mills and other types of factories, who selected them because they would work for smaller salaries and had better manual dexterity and smaller fingers to work in the equipment. There were dangers in wearing dresses in factories, but there were also dangers of working next to open fires in dresses. They still did it. In WWII, they entered the defense factories in larger numbers. They had already worn pants in some situations for years at that point, though. In the Depression, a poor family might hand down their sons' overalls to the little girls, just because that's what they had. Even before that, some women wore bloomers under dresses for both style and practicality. Some pioneer women wore what was most practical in their new homes on the plains. Factories didn't start women's lib, nor were they the start of women wearing pants. In reality, poverty and practicality played a much larger role.
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