Why Don’t Women’s Clothes Have More Pockets?

“Why Don’t Women’s Clothes Have More Pockets?”, Vanessa Friedman, The New York Times, November 6 2023.

Why don’t women’s clothes have more pockets? And when they do, why are they so small and useless? It’s like being short-sheeted. I cannot believe this is still going on in the 21st century. Please explain.

The pocket problem is a perennial[1] one, for good reason. The story of those – often, as you say, tiny – compartments is crammed[2] to the brim with plot twists that involve sexism, racism, control, economic disparity and more. Who knew so many hot-button social issues could be contained in such a tiny space?

Well, maybe Darwin. After all, pockets make evolutionary sense. In theory, the more necessities you can carry on your body, the more efficiently you can move through the world. As an article in The New York Times in 1899 read: If “Adam and Eve both began life without any pockets, it seems to me that the difference in the progress of the sexes toward pockets illustrates and prov