Women Wearing Pants - Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century

During World War I, women wore their husbands' (suitably altered) trousers while they took on male jobs, and increasingly wore trousers as leisurewear in the 1920s and 30s. And for a period in the 1970s, trousers became quite fashionable for women. In the United States, this may be due to the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which ruled that dresses could not be required of girls. Dress codes changed in public schools across the United States. Today, though trousers are not as fashionable as previously, jeans are sometimes worn as casual wear by many women, while skirts and dresses remain more typical feminine wear.

Women working the ranches of the 19th century USA also wore trousers, for riding, and in the early 20th century aviatrices and other working women often wore trousers. Actresses Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn were often photographed in trousers from the 1930s. During World War II, women working in factories and doing other forms of "men's work" on war service wore trousers, and in the post-war era trousers were still common casual wear for gardening, socialising, and other leisure pursuits.

In Britain during the Second World War, because of the rationing of clothing, many women took to wearing their husbands' civilian clothes to work while their husbands were away in the armed forces. This was partly because they were seen as work garments, and partly to allow women to keep their clothing allowance for other uses. As the men's clothes wore out, replacements were needed, so that by the summer of 1944 it was reported that sales of women's trousers were five times more than in the previous year.

In the 1960s, André Courrèges introduced jeans for women, leading to the era of designer jeans.