And few are the businesses where they're not yet accepted. (Interestingly, Wall Street, which long ago discovered that wearing the old school tie had nothing to do with being a successful stock trader, is one of them.) Pantsuits sales grew 167 percent between 1990 and 1995 in the United States, and retailers report great sales this fall.

But when the professional stakes are really high, and we need maximum power, most of us opt for skirts. The old taboo isn't dead; we suspect that, psychologically, the skirt has the edge.

Extremely powerful business and political women are almost never seen in trousers. Why do you think they use traditional dress to protect their power rather than use their power to offer women the option to dress as so many of us prefer? Women in their 20s and early 30s are the majority of business pants wearers. Do we just need one more generation to stamp out the idea that pants are less acceptable, or will they get into suits with skirts as they get more responsibility?

Women in drag
From a historical perspective, they're nothing to fight over. Modern trousers descend from the 18th-century costumes worn by the bottom rung of the European working classes, colonial slave laborers and British sailors (not officers). All the "better" types wore skintight breeches. But comfort and practicality won out and the men's suit, essentially unchanged today, became standard by Victorian times.

It was Coco Chanel, whose label is more powerful than ever, who made pants acceptable as women's fashion in the late 1920s. Then only the rich could afford the freedom to pioneer pants in all contexts from sporty to elegant, but the taboo was broken.

The barriers continued to fall, but not without skirmishes. In 1951 Katharine Hepburn, a major pants pioneer, was told slacks were not allowed in the lobby of Claridge’s Hotel in London. From then on she made a point of using the servants' entrance at all times. And after Yves Saint Laurent's early '70s pantsuits dazzled the fashionable world, perennial best-dressed socialite Nan Kempner was informed by the maitre d' of Manhattan's fancy French restaurant du jour that this costume was not acceptable. Not to be bullied, she took off her trousers and continued to her table in the outfit's (long) jacket.

Pants vs. skirts
OK, if the look of authority is male, pants should be good. On the other hand, trying to "pass" signals being unsure of oneself. The bottom line is that women's traditional costume is a skirt and, when trying to get ahead, one needs to play by the rules.

But who made the rules? Men? 'Fraid so. The famously feisty economist Thorstein Veblen said a century ago, "The substantial reason for our tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this: ...It hampers the wearer at every turn."

We've come a long way in a hundred years, but, although women constitute half the world's population and perform two-thirds of its work hours, we receive one-tenth of the world's income and own less than one one-hundredth of its property. Maybe men should go back to silk pantaloons to signify their status, and leave us the regular, plebeian trousers.

10 reasons not to wear skirts again:

1. You won't have to keep your knees pressed together when you sit down.
2. You won't have to wear heels just because the outfit demands them.
3. You agree with Katharine Hepburn, who said, "Stockings are an invention of the devil."
4. You suspect she was also right when she said, "The short skirt is really hideous. You are breaking the line that should be carried to the ground."
5. You won't be hobbled by your long skirt when you're running for the bus.
6. The wind won't blow all the way up to your waist in winter, and your coat will never be one inch shorter than your skirt.
7. You'll be able to go up the ladder first.
8. You can cut up all your pantyhose and use the pieces to tie the peonies to stakes.
9. You can get out of the limo without wondering if the paparazzi have grabbed a shot of your underpants.
10. You won't chop off your favorite skirt two months before hemlines go down again.