Today’s story about British Airways allowing their flight attendants to wear pants reminded us that we lived through the “pants revolution.” I remember in the 70s being turned away from the Ritz bar in Boston because I was wearing a pantsuit.

Was it pants then or did they say slacks? Looking back, perhaps “slacks” was a name to make a distinction between what men wore and what women wore.  Slacks were particularly popular for “older” women and somehow meant to describe pants that were fancier. The word slacks is dated and most now agree that we all wear pants, except in the UK where they wear trousers.

Some notable facts:

  • In the 1960 Andre Courreges introduced jeans for women.
  • Title IX Amendment somehow got pants into the conversation.
  • Pat Nixon was the first American First Lady to wear pants in public.
  • Hillary Clinton and her rainbow colored pants suits became written about more than her politics in the 90s.

When more women started to attend law schools and business schools, wearing pants to work made sense but in many workplace environments women battled office dress codes that encouraged dresses.

As more and more women hit the workplace, we heard the media ask the question “Who wears the pants?” But the conundrum is that we say Real men can wear pink, but can Real women wear dresses and still be thought of as equal? Really, after all this time, how can this still be an issue? It is interesting that in this day and age, it took British Airways two years to agree to letting their flight attendants where “trousers”:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/05/female-british-airways-cabin-crew-win-the-right-to-wear-trousers