#1
For some reason, a lot of women's clothing are lacking in functional pockets. A lot of them don't even have pockets. Some would call this gender politics in the world of fashion. Just chalk this one up to the growing list of things women have been on the short end of.
Women, since the early 1800s, have been faced with a dearth of functional pockets on their garments. To emphasize aesthetics over practicality, items were placed in a bag where the handbag originated from but these bags basically had no room for much of anything. Of course, some women fought to keep their pockets and large bags, like old women and women in the working class. In the late-1800s, when bags became fashionable again, there was a conscious decision to call smaller bags elegant, instead of having the large ones be the items of fashion. (And now, it's fashionable to have giantBirkin bags, right?)
#2
When the World Wars rolled through in the early and mid-1900s, women began to wear trousers (they were originally men's, but were altered to fit a woman's body). The large pockets, which were considered to be "masculine," were sized down, and sometimes even removed from the garment itself. The female trouser went through variations untilCoco Chanel popularized it. By the time the feminist movement swept through the nation, pocketless (or with totally not functional pockets) pants were here to stay
#3
This question was asked on Reddit and people came up with a variety of their own conclusions.
Pants designed for women were intended to follow their shape, their curves, and of course, as some theorize, to help designers sell their bags.
It has to do with figure profile. Hour glass curves are disrupted by full pockets. You can make it more complicated by mixing in advertisers and designers picking up on needing an alternative storage container(s), and seeing the purse as a cash cow. But in this case, the aesthetics came first. u/Vlad_Z
#4
And, for a more economical reason, removing pockets from pants can lead to more profit from saving on supplies, materials, and time.
I once met a clothes designer for Zara at wedding. Here's my chance! Petitioned her for about 20 minutes for more pockets on clothes while she patiently waited for my rant to finish then quickly skips in. "Yeah, I always put pockets all my designs but the accountants cull them. Losing two pockets on a pair of trousers can mean 60-80k more profit worldwide" Then she lists all the designs they will cull, extra buttons, flares, prints etc till it became clear that the bean counters really rule fashion. You want pockets, go to a small designer at a market place. u/Ropeaddict
