Women’s fight to wear the trousers continues in Ireland’s education system
by Rose Mary Roche
20th Mar 2022
20th Mar 2022
BY ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES.
It’s 2022 and women are still fighting for the right to, literally, wear the trousers as aspirations to appear ‘ladylike’ remain embedded in Ireland’s education system. As students at one Dublin all-girls school fight this with their #whowearsthetrousers campaign, Rose Mary Roche brings us through the 'most significant fashion change of the 20th century' from Katherine Hepburn and Coco Chanel to Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton.
Pupils at all-girls Dublin secondary school, Maryfield College, in Drumcondra, are campaigning to have the option of wearing trousers as part of their uniform, reveals how gendered clothing ideals still persist. Spurred on by the experience of sitting in freezing Covid classrooms and the fact that LGBT students weren’t best served by the fatwa on trousers, their #whowearsthetrousers campaign was initiated with hopes of ending discriminatory “skirts only” uniform policies in Irish schools. Twenty years...
