And another person pointed out that women wearing pants in a professional context is a shockingly recent development. “If he is over 50 years old, he is most likely referring to the fact that you’re wearing pants. It took until the mid-20th century for men to accept that women can wear pants. Yes, I know how stupid this sounds. It took until 1972 in the USA for girls to be able to legally wear pants to school. Women were not allowed to wear pants on the U.S. Senate floor until 1993.”
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 made it illegal for schools receiving federal assistance to require women and girls to wear dresses and skirts. And in 1993, the dress code for the Senate was loosened after Senators Carol Moseley-Braun and Barbara Mikulski bucked tradition and came to work in pantsuits (I truly can’t believe this happened during my lifetime and not, like, 30 years before I was born).
