That doesn't require the patriarchy, just the fashion industry in general trying to sell as much as possible. Adding an entirely different and otherwise unnecessary article of clothing is a brilliant idea honestly.
My wife routinely makes me remove car keys or other bulkier things from my pocket because they "make me look bigger".
I love my wife dearly I really do. But she deserved having to put things in her bra. Maybe I should start putting my car keys in the front of my underwear. As a fashion statement.
There used to be pockets on women's clothes - or more accurately, you tied them on yourself as they came separately from the clothes - but they fell out of fashion as handbags became the fashion statement that said: look - I'm not poor enough to have to have pockets.
Very dumb, but it is what it is.
What baffles me now is that pockets on women's clothes haven't made a comeback yet. How asleep at the wheel are fashion designers?
I suspect that the problem is that while people want big pockets, small pocket clothes look better. If there was a real demand for big pockets, there would be money to make in selling those, and big pocket brands would dominate.
That's one of the reasons they use a bra in general (the other one is nipple masking, that's why even women with small breasts that don't need any support wear them). Lack of pockets is the reason they "carry things in their bra".
One of my school friends made some extra money during 6th form by offering to sew new, bigger pockets in various girls clothing. On average she did about 5 pairs of jeans a week at about £15 per pair. She went on to do fashion design at uni and now runs her own small business and despite branching out to do so much more stuff one of the services she kept doing was pocket replacements and extensions.
Really? I was taught to because if someone mugs me for money it becomes a felony instead of misdemeanor pickpocketing. I was pickpocketed once from a purse and never again, goes in the bra every time.
Modern smartphones are too big for women's pockets and too big for their average hand size so as a result women are far more likely to drop phones and incur unnecessary expense of replacing them. Our world is simply designed around a male default and apparently we just accept that.
Some types of woman clothing can't be made with pockets, mini/micro skirts and leggings for example, so using another available storage space is only logical.
PLEASE don’t put your phone in your bra. It’s odd, I found articles talking about no increased chance, but also remembered hearing about it in the news years ago, and saw these:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7605549/
“Excessive smartphone use significantly increased the risk of breast cancer, particularly for participants with smartphone addiction, a close distance between the breasts and smartphone, and the habit of smartphone use before bedtime.”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3789302/
“All [4] patients regularly carried their smartphones directly against their breasts in their brassieres for up to 10 hours a day, for several years, and developed tumors in areas of their breasts immediately underlying the phones.”