She's wearing a miniskirt in the transporter room scene. You can see it, when she walks up and sits down at the beginning of the scene.
Mr. Bennett, "Timewalker" does have a point: 60 years is a bit too recent. More like 75 years, because women wearing pants, at least as work attire, was accepted (by necessity) at least as far back as World War II and the "Rosie the Riveter" era. And with acceptance as factory-wear (and acceptance decades earlier as farm and ranch work-wear) inevitably came acceptance as fashion (albeit avant-garde fashion) attire.
Yep. Does anyone here recall Katharine Hepburn wearing pants or slacks in some of her movies? Nobody called her a "transvestite."
For an examination of trousers on women, there are many great books and articles on them. For you guys, on googlebooks why not have a look at the Epilogue on female trousers in Gayle Fischer's Pantaloons & Power: A Nineteenth-century Dress Reform in the United States. Also have a look at more wider books on fashion - Fashion, Culture and Identity, Fashion and Modernity (edited by the head of my school), and others on the net.
The discussion about the skant pops up in the Star Trek Online forums as well at least once a year. Usually, it begins to focus on LGBT people, as if they were the only proponents of introducing this fashion into the game. The disucssion here is different - it's more about gender equality across history, and the first LGBT reference popped up comparatively late. I admit I like this spin on the topic and the infusion of fresh arguments! My opininion on the skant: While I believe it would be an excellent option for 24th century civilian clothing, skants and dresses seem inappropriate for a uniform for practical reasons. In every combat situation or first contact, the wearer would've have to mind not showing their underwear while crouching. And what about moving around in places full of nettles or ticks? Granted, STO offers stockings for additional protection. However, isn't having both legs wrapped in fabric the most comfortable garment when you're about to enter an adventure?
Again, though, "skant" is a portmanteau of "skirt" and "pants." Like the TOS "miniskirt" uniforms that were actually mini-culottes, it's not open on the bottom; it's more like very short shorts with flaps to give it a skirtlike appearance. At least I assume that from the name. So you're not actually seeing underwear, you're seeing part of the same continuous outer garment. I don't think we ever saw anyone wearing a skant off the ship, other than Troi and at least one male extra in "Encounter at Farpoint." Comfort is often a function of what you're used to. In discussions about Sleepy Hollow and Ichabod Crane's wardrobe, I've seen it pointed out that the tailoring of 18th-century clothes was so different from that of tailoring today that Crane would probably find our clothes extremely uncomfortable to wear -- and this was actually borne out in one of the later episodes of the season. Ancient Roman soldiers went on plenty of adventures wearing knee-length tunics and loincloths. They would sometimes wear puttees (lower-leg wrappings) or braccae (knee-length wool trousers) in cooler climes, but were forbidden to wear long trousers, which were considered unmanly. (Perhaps because they were the invention of horse-nomad cultures, which sedentary agrarian civilizations like the Romans tended to see as savage and inferior. But I'm just guessing there.)
I agree that from a practical standpoint, and from a "gender - equality" standpoint, pants work. I think that it would be interesting for a TrekLit story to include a subplot of civilian life in the 24th century, and discuss what the teenagers are wearing. That might provide some opportunities to reveal the "fashionable" garb of the future, at least on the planet in question.
But the skant was actually culottes, which appeared to be a skirt due to the front panel. Even the TOS mini was a divided skirt, according to Grace Lee Whitney, who sat with Bill Theiss as he sketched it. It had one leg wrapped by fabric, making "riding up" impossible. i think the only time we got a flash of undergarment, or the wrapped thigh, was Helen Noel crawling through the ducting, followed by a camera.