The hemline index is a theory rumoured to date back to the 1920s suggesting that the level of economic prosperity is somehow linked to the length of women’s skirts. The initial theory suggested that skirt lengths rise and fall along with stock prices, getting shorter in good economic times and longer in bad (although an alternate theory suggesting the reverse was proposed in the 1950s). The 2000s saw the popularity of mini skirts and the ‘micro-mini’, while the various crashes of the 1990s accompanied the rise of the maxi skirt. At first glance this seems to have some weight, but with any critical thinking, the entire theory goes out the window. So why does it remain so popular?
The male dominated subjects and industries (in this instance, the Wall Street and economic theory) seem to be fascinated with men’s interactions with the ‘mysteries of women’ — women are considered to be objects to study, similar to the stock market or are viewed as subjects of economics itself. The men in these fields, time and again, objectify women as means of studying other subjects to negate their complete lack of understanding of interacting with the opposite sex.
In 1978, an American newspaper came up with the quote “If you see a guy in a three-piece suit staring out the window at female legs this autumn, don’t jump to sexist conclusions. Maybe he’s not just a chauvinist pig, after all: he could be diligently seeking clues to the financial future.” Such weak excuses for men to cover up blatant chauvinism and their disrespectful behaviour towards the female population shows a historical lack of willingness to for them to properly integrate women into the world of academia and economics. The author, instead, chooses to make a joke about what is already known to be a weak, if not a completely debunked theory in economics, in order to legitimise the casual sexism that women face on the daily (even more prevalent if you consider that 1974 was when second wave feminism began to garner increasing popularity in countries like the US).
Based on the aforementioned, it is not a coincidence that women in male dominated industries are considered ‘mysterious’ or are objectified as fascinating beings who are meant to be studied. This is a consistent and pervasive way by which the patriarchy has been able to separate and keep women from participating in certain matters. Yet, even the subjects of these studies, the women themselves, are not even taken seriously — the hemline index is a weak theory at best which disregards women. All these pervasive forms of sexism are not just limited to the subject of economics but are deeply rooted in our society. In a way, the hemline index is a metaphor for women and feminism in academia.
On the one hand, it is possible to see the hemline index as a form of early feminism in the heavily masculinised worlds of economics and business — a revolutionary idea where women are not merely mindless consumers in the economy, but have a hand in shaping economic trends and ideas. However, this idea comes with a degree of responsibility for economic issues in which women can not be blamed. Furthermore, such theories are either negative or incorrect which only entrenches patriarchal ideas about women not being able to offer anything positive to the subjects. Women are constantly scapegoated for being the reasons behind their own oppression. The individuals behind these theories constantly try to make it appear as if women cannot enter certain fields because their brains aren’t wired to significantly understand them. This weak theory, thus, not only represents this shallow presentation of women, but also suggests that it is one of the few that women would understand by using examples they are “familiar with”, even when incorrect.
Overall, the Hemline index is an exploitation of coincidence rather than being based on any form of correlation. We are not in and have never been in any crisis of capitalism, the economy has a tendency to fail every 10 years or so — the 1990s saw the burst of the dot com bubble, the 2000s saw the 2008 housing market crash and the recession, and the 2010s/2020s witnessed a global pandemic alongside the years of international conservative economic policy. While on the fashion side, we see the trend cycle also happen to repeat itself every 10-ish years or so — the mini and micro-mini skirts storming across social media in 2022 in the same way they dominated red carpet looks in 2001 with even the iconic skirt-over-jeans look that we remember from 2008 appearing on red carpets in 2023.
As mentioned earlier, there was a reversal of the hemline theory proposed in the 1950s which just so happened to correspond with the Bretton-Woods era of economic central planning. There were no significant economic downturns of these years while the fashion cycle remained true to the general 10 year cycle. In these years of economic prosperity, the 1950s saw the popularity of the full and long skirts for housewives and the 1960s saw the invention of the mini skirt. Yet, funnily enough, no economic correlation was found.