In addition to the International Women’s Day on 8th March, in the USA, Great Britain and Australia the whole month is devoted to the history of women’s rights. Each year, on the occasion of the “Women’s History Month”, women and their contribution to society are emphasised and celebrated. This is important since, for a long time, women were written out of history, their fight for equality played down and their commitment ignored by politics and science. Examining women’s history means, therefore, also to put the focus on the private sphere, on areas which were often devalued as of marginal importance, but which were anything but.
A cultural-historical look at everyday life is particularly helpful here. We are devoting this Spotlight to women and their clothing. We shall examine striving for emancipation as self-determination through fashion, as a struggle to be able to move around freely and to appropriate the male article of clothing par excellence – trousers.
From Ötzi to knights: A short history of trousers
The gender-specific, binary classification of trousers being equal to male and a skirt, respectively dress being equal to female, is relatively young and has its origins in Europe. In other cultures, men wear long tunics or wrap-round skirts, like the South Asian lungi or the South East Asian sarong for example, up to the present day. Loose-fitting harem trousers are widespread as women’s clothing in the Arab world and in Asia.