Women wear trousers
To trail round the shops;
Women in trousers
Wield brushes and mops.
Women wear trousers
For sleeping and sitting
And pouring out tea in
And doing their knitting.
For cleaning the windows
(Or least ways in breeches)
And planting potatoes
And scrapping out ditches.
They wear them for punching
Our tickets in trams,
Or pushing their babies
Abroad in their prams.
In fact nearly everything
Under the sun
But — why don't they wear them
For manning a gun!
Notes
From the magazine PUNCH magazine during World War 2, December 3rd, 1941, p. 483.
Not a question anyone would even think about in the 21st Century but when this was first published during World War 2 it was perfectly valid.
Trousers were in fashion for women for all sorts of reasons but the military lagged far behind civvy street.
Jim Saville
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Comments
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Today I was sorting through some old magazines and came across the original publication (Punch) containing this poem and the thought struck me that in this egalitarian world women do "man the guns" and they do do it in trousers.
Would CFS be happy at this mark of progress I wonder?
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