It’s “Wear the Pants Day”

I’m wearing jeans today. How about you? If you’re wearing a skirt or perhaps a sun dress, you might want to think about changing. Why? Because New Moon Girls has declared today “Wear the Pants Day” to draw attention to the fact that millions of girls and women around the world are still forbidden or discouraged from wearing pants.

According to New Moon, girls and women are beaten, arrested, and worse for wearing pants. In fact, last fall schoolgirls in the Sudan were flogged for wearing pants and 20 women in Uganda were stripped of their pants and forced to walk home in underwear.

But the issue of women / girls and pants hits closer to home. Only 2 years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported on a “persistent bias against pants-wearing women in careers such as law and finance.” Female college grads are warned to wear skirts if they have hopes of hitting the top posts in their professions. And women in the senate and congress only started wearing pants in the 1990s!

Why today, you ask? Here’s what New Moon has to say:

“New Moon Girls picked this day because on June 11, 1964, the Equal Pay Act was enacted in the U.S., mandating that women receive equal pay for equal work. Now, some 46 years later, pants barriers have largely toppled in the US; however, American women still earn just 77 cents to a man’s dollar. Wearing pants today helps keep us focused on the work that remains ahead to ensure that our daughters enter a workplace that’s finally fair.”

So, wear your pants (or shorts if it’s really hot where you live) today and stand up for women everywhere!