Women have been complaining for years that the pockets in their trousers are too small, shallow and inferior to those of men. Now thanks to the informal research of two curious journalists there’s data to support their argument.

Journalists Jan Diehm and Amber Thomas of the data journalism site The Pudding, measured the width and depth of the pockets of 80 pairs of jeans across 20 brands – 40 men’s and 40 women’s – sourced from malls in Nashville, New York and Seattle. To overcome any quibbling about men’s pants being bigger than women’s and therefore having bigger pockets, the journalists always chose size 32 waists and sampled one skinny and one straight pair for each gender.

As a practical demonstration of what this means in terms of the carrying capacity of women’s pockets – 100% of men’s front pockets can fit an iPhone X or average sized wallet in them while only 40% of women’s are large enough. For back pockets the discrepancies are far less significant and while the study is not exhaustive by any scientific standards it’s at least hopefully a beginning to getting jean manufacturers to take notice of something that women have long and justifiably been complaining about.