page_title: Trousers as women's clothing
hierarchical_section_title: Trousers as women's clothing
caption_attribution_description: FOTO: Tom Hansen / Innovasjon Norge
context_page_description: Trousers or pants first appear in recorded history among nomadic steppe-people in Western Europe. Archaeological evidence suggests that men and women alike wore pants in that cultural context. However, for much of modern history, the use of trousers has been restricted to men. In many regions, this norm was enforced not only by social custom but also by law. There are, however, many historical cases of women wearing trousers in defiance of these norms, for a variety of reasons, including comfort, freedom of movement, fashion, disguise, attempts to evade the gender pay gap, and attempts to establish an empowered public identity for women. Especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, the customs and laws restricting this manner of dress have relaxed dramatically, reflecting a growing acceptance and normalization of the practice.
  Various US cities, in the 19th and 20th centuries, passed legislation barring women from wearing trousers.
context_section_description: Trousers (British English) or pants (American English) first appear in recorded history among nomadic steppe-people in Western Europe. Archaeological evidence suggests that men and women alike wore pants in that cultural context. However, for much of modern history, the use of trousers has been restricted to men. In many regions, this norm was enforced not only by social custom but also by law. There are, however, many historical cases of women wearing trousers in defiance of these norms, for a variety of reasons, including comfort, freedom of movement, fashion, disguise (notably for runaway slaves), attempts to evade the gender pay gap, and attempts to establish an empowered public identity for women. Especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, the customs and laws restricting this manner of dress have relaxed dramatically, reflecting a growing acceptance and normalization of the practice. 
  Various US cities, in the 19th and 20th centuries, passed legislation barring women from wearing trousers. Representative among these was an 1863 law passed by San Francisco's Board of Supervisors criminalizing appearing in public in "a dress not belonging to his or her sex", although similar laws existed in Columbus, Ohio (passed 1848); Chicago, Illinois (passed 1851); Houston, Texas (passed 1864); Orlando, Florida (passed 1907), and approximately two dozen other US cities. (Anti-crossdressing laws continued to pass well into the 20th century, with Detroit, Michigan, and Miami, Florida, passing laws as late as the 1950s, and Cincinnati, Ohio, passing one in 1974.)
  Additionally, existing laws such as anti-vagrancy statutes were pressed into service to ensure that women would dress in accord with the gender norms of the time. One such instance would be New York's anti-vagrancy statute of 1845, which stated that "Every person who, having his face painted, discolored, covered or concealed, or being otherwise disguised, in a manner calculated to prevent him from being identified, shall appear in any road or public highway, or in any field, lot, wood or inclosure, may be pursued and arrested”. This law was used to prosecute women for cross-dressing, on the grounds that their dressing outside of gender norms constituted a "disguise". Boston used similar anti-vagrancy laws to arrest Emma Snodgrass and Harriet French in 1852. (Snodgrass would be arrested again in Cleveland in 1853, and French would be arrested again in New York in 1856.) French reportedly broke with convention in order to pursue job opportunities open only to men: she claimed to the New York Daily Times that she could "get more wages" dressed as a man. 
  Anti-vagrancy laws were also used to arrest Jennie Westbrook in New York, in 1882 and 1883. Westbook's case was said at the time to have "awakened deep interest" among the public, as it was understood that she was attempting to "escape from that bondage [to] which social laws have subjected the sex". Like Harriet French in Boston, West identified work opportunities as her reason for cross-dressing: "Her excuse was that she could make $20 a week in her disguise, while as a 'saleslady' in a fashionable store the pay would be only one-third that amount."
caption: Anita Krohn Traaseth in trousers, Norway, 2013
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