In short: what an absolute and entirely avoidable shambles.
Unrelated PS: someone got in touch after
last week’s email to complain that I called the stick figures in the Education Policy Institutes’ graphic “men”. Was it because of the trousers, he pondered.
Yet most women in my schools EYFS Dept wore trousers. Constant kneeling and bending. Comfort, decency, convenience, POCKETS.
“Keep up the (otherwise) good work ):” he concluded, not at all patronisingly.
Now listen up, matey. First up, I said default male not men. Remedial reading of, oh probably the entire of
Invisible Women for you. Here’s
a link for you to buy a copy.
Second, thanks for alerting me to the fact that women can and do wear trousers (had no idea) and also to the existence of pockets!! I didn’t realise such mythical constructs existed IRL.
And sticking with that subject, the results of the YouGov pockets survey are in! The good news is that we can definitely put to bed the idea that women actively don’t want pockets in their clothes as
was claimed by some pyjama w*nker. For every item of clothing surveyed (jacket, trousers, dress, skirt, shorts, pyjamas), more women wanted pockets than didn’t – although the preference was greatest for jackets and trousers.
However I can definitely clarify that any retailer currently selling women’s trousers without pockets can get to f*ck: EIGHTY PER CENT of women surveyed said they wanted pockets in their trousers. Same goes for jackets where 95% of women want pockets (versus only 92% for men! Who always get pockets!). The figures were more underwhelming for dresses and skirts (although WITH pockets won in both instances), however I do wonder how much of that is to do the many different styles of dresses and skirts and women not wanting pockets on a dress if it’s form-fitting, which was a level of detail we couldn’t easily capture. I mean, personally I would rather have pockets than a form-fitting dress, but then I am an unbearable radical feminist killjoy.
Interestingly, there was a bit of an age split over pocket prefs. For dresses and skirts, where in general the attitude was a bit 🤷♀️ women under 39 were more likely to want pockets than women 40 and above (by 13pts and 8pts respectively).
Particularly interesting, however, was the pyjamas. For women aged 18-29, 51% said they preferred having pockets (15% didn’t want pockets; 28% were 🤷♀️), which was barely different to men of the same age at 55% (in conclusion, given men always have pockets, give us fecking pockets because there’s barely any difference in preferences). But for women over 60 only 18% wanted pockets in their jammies?? What gives, women over 60?! (to be fair, only 22% of men over 60 wanted pockets so I guess…
…
…
…nope I still have no idea). Anyway, still, give us bloody pockets.
The question we asked over whether someone had ever NOT bought an item of clothing they liked because it either did or didn’t have pockets was where it got really interesting though. For both men and women of all ages, the percentage of those who had NOT bought an item of clothing they liked because it DID have pockets came in at 16% and 19% respectively. BUT. For both men and women of all ages, the number of those who had NOT bought an item of clothing they liked because it did NOT have pockets was 38%! THE SAME! SO WHY DO MEN ALWAYS GET BL**DY POCKETS IN THEIR CLOTHES AND WE DON’T?!?!?!?!?!?
IN CONCLUSION:
GIVE
US
POCKETS