March is National Women’s History Month, and what do girls love the most? Pants. Surprisingly, women’s pants helped women start movements and dress the way they wanted. But who made the pants?

Elizabeth Smith Miller created the first pair of women’s pants in 1851 and she was one of the first women to wear them. However, they weren’t called “pants” just yet. 

According to Britannica, “It consisted of a skirt extending below the knees and loose ‘Turkish’ trousers that gathered at the ankles, and it was worn with a short jacket on top.” These loose fitted pants were called bloomers.

The history of women’s rights can actually be looked at through the history of women wearing pants.

Women’s pants were created because skirts and dresses were heavy and hot. These new pants were light and breezy. However, this new clothing caused issues with men in America. Women were mocked, received death threats and ridiculed. 

According to The Atlantic, the women who were brave to wear pants out on the public streets were described as going through a “daily Crucifixion” which meant everytime women stepped outside wearing pants, they were going to suffer from assault and brutal reality from society’s views.

But women and their desire for rights and the right to wear pants freely was not deterred. Women started the “dress reform” movement. According to the article, “When American Suffragists Tried to Wear the Pants,” the women who were at the forefront of this movement were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. 

These women were called “Suffragist”, they were the ones to risk their social lives and lives themselves to gain the freedom for voting which they used as a type of protest. 

Pants helped women work with movements such as the women’s rights movement and women’s suffrage. 

Anthony, one of the suffragists thought of a brilliant Idea, you can’t wear a dress and ride a bike? She made a movement which involved bike riding in pants.  

According to Kittelson and Associates, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.”

Jump to 1993 and women still couldn’t wear pants in Congress. Before 1993, women had to fight for even the right to equal access to a bathroom, sizable locker room, lounge room.  

The first woman to wear pants in congress was Charlotte T. Reid, a republican for Illinois. She showed up in a black wool, bell-bottomed pantsuit which according to PBS news, a few women did follow in her footsteps but most were discouraged

While the men had a two story lounge room with a pool the women had a small room, according to PBS  news, “Rep. Pat Schroeder described the facility as “six hair dryers and a ping-pong table.”

While pants seem like a small aspect of this larger fight for equal rights, it’s hugely symbolic to society’s acceptance of women and what spaces they are powerful in. 

Women have been fighting for years, and they still are today. They now have National Women’s Month to show how strong they are from all the sexism and the different ways they get treated.

Although, according to Huffpost, “Pants alone can’t and didn’t give women greater lives, but their associations with masculine authority encouraged many women to make changes.” However pants were able to help shape women’s lives for the better.

 Pants were invented to help women express themselves and free their spirits. Women in Afghanistan and other conservative counties used to be able to wear pants but lost their right although they fought so hard to free the knees.