Pocket inequality is real.
Womens clothes often dont have pockets, and when they do, theyre these teeny weeny non-pockets that dont deserve the name.
Is it a ploy to weigh us all down with handbags?
Everyone who wears womens clothes knows that the pockets arent usually worth the fabric theyre made out of.
But for any doubters out there, we now have actual proof.
A study from The Pudding has confirmed that womens pockets are much smaller than mens.
Across 80 different pairs of blue jeans, womens front pockets were found to be an average of 48% smaller and 6.5% narrower than those in equivalent trousers for men.
Anyone thinking but men are generally bigger than women so of course their pockets are bigger, please note that all the jeans tested had a 32 inch waistband, so would fit roughly the same size of person.
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Most of the jeans studied, from major brands including Calvin Klein, Guess, H&M, J. Crew, Lee, Levis, Wrangler, Uniqlo and Ralph Lauren, had insufficiently small pockets for women, preventing even small items from fitting inside.
Only 40% of the womens brands surveyed could fit an iPhoneX in the front pocket, 20% a Samsung Galaxy, and 5% a Google Pixel.
For men, every single pair of jeans could hold an iPhoneX, 95% could fit a Samsung Galaxy, and 85% a Google Pixel.
For Google phone users, there was a massive 80% discrepancy between male and female pocket sizes.
Other than phones, pens, cosmetics, wallets, spare change, cardholders, bunched up earbuds, crumbs and crumpled bus tickets, pockets are most useful for holding your hands when youre cold, dont know what to do with them or simply want to slouch at a louche angle with your hands pocketed.
However, if youre wearing womens jeans, you can kiss that goodbye.
A pathetic 10% of womens jeans could fit a female hand inside and 5% could fit a male hand.
Every single pair of mens jeans could fit a male or female hand inside the pockets.
The pocket size gap
Womens skinny jean pockets: 3.5 inches (48%) shorter and 0.3 inches (6%) narrower.
Womens straight jean pockets: 3.4 inches (46%) shorter and 0.6 inches (10%) narrower.
The back pockets of the jeans surveyed fared a little better in terms of gender equality, being only 5% shorter and 2% narrower than mens on average.
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However, back pockets are not convenient for storing anything that you might break by sitting down on it, and walking around with your nice shiny smartphone sticking out of your back pocket is a pretty effective way of getting it stolen.
Women need pockets. We like pockets.
My favourite dress is one with deep pockets. Ditto my favourite skirt and favourite pair of trousers.
When you find an item of womens clothing that actually has pockets for human sized hands, you cling on to it like its the floating door that definitely had room for both Rose AND Jack.
More: Fashion
Real pockets for women are rare, beautiful unicorns, but they absolutely shouldnt be.
Give us proper pockets, please.
If were going to spend £85 on a pair of Levis skinny jeans, we want them to hold our stuff.
Its not such a big ask.
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