Women wearing pants (trousers) were thought by some to be historically almost non-existent, apart from Amazonian women, but have become more commonplace since the advent of feminism in the middle to late 20th century.

In the Western world, women have historically worn dresses and skirt-like garments while men have worn trousers. During the late 19th century, women started to wear trousers and blouses for industrial work. During World War II, women wore their husbands' trousers while they took on jobs, and in the 1970s, trousers became especially fashionable for women. In the United States, this may be due to the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which made public education treat males and females equally and in turn dresses could not be required of female students and dress codes changed in public schools across the United States. Today, trousers are worn by many women but most women still wear skirts or dresses some of the time.

Although trousers for women in western countries did not become fashion items until the later 20th century, women began wearing men's trousers (suitably altered) for outdoor work a hundred years earlier.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer (May 27, 1818 – December 30, 1894) was an American women's rights and temperance advocate. Even though she did not create the women's clothing reform style known as bloomers, her name became associated with it because of her early and strong advocacy.

Bloomer came from a family of modest means and received only a few years of formal schooling. When she was 22, she married attorney Dexter Bloomer who encouraged her to write for his New York newspaper, the Seneca Falls County Courier.

She spent her early years in Cortland County, New York. Bloomer and her family moved to Iowa in 1852. She died at Council Bluffs, Iowa. She is commemorated together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Ross Tubman in the calendar of saints of the Episcopal Church on July 20. Her home at Seneca Falls, New York, known as the Amelia Bloomer House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

In 1848, Bloomer attended the Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. In 1849, Bloomer began publishing her views on temperance and social issues in her own bi-weekly publication, The Lily. While the newspaper initially focused on temperance, Bloomer came under the influence of temperance activist and suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton who contributed articles on the broader issues of women's rights. The newspaper contained a broad mix of contents ranging from recipes to moralist tracts, including topics such as marriage law reform and higher education for women. In publication through 1853, The Lily eventually had a circulation of over 4,000. This newspaper is believed to have been a model for later periodicals focused on women's suffrage.