A pussyhat is a pink, crafted brimless hat or cap, created in large numbers by women involved with the United States 2017 Women's March. They are the result of the Pussyhat Project, a nationwide effort initiated by Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, a screenwriter and architect located in Los Angeles, to create pink hats to be worn at the march.

In response to this call, crafters all over the United States began making these hats using patterns provided on the project Web site for use with either a knitting method, crocheting and even sewing with fabrics. The project's goal was to have one million hats handed out at the Washington March. The hats are made using pink yarns or fabrics and were originally designed to be a positive form of protest for Trump's inauguration by Krista Suh. Suh, from Los Angeles, wanted a hat for the cooler climate in Washington, D.C. and made a hat for herself to wear at the Women's March, realizing the potential: "We could all wear them, make a unified statement". One of the project founders, Jayna Zweiman, stated "I think it's resonating a lot because we're really saying that no matter who you are or where you are, you can be politically active." Suh and Zweiman worked with Kat Coyle, the owner of a local knitting supply shop called The Little Knittery, to come up with the original design. The project launched in November 2016 and quickly became popular on social media with over 100,000 downloads of the pattern to make the hat.

Suh and Zweiman started the project in 2016, while Zweiman was recovering from a head injury. As she could not attend the Women's March during this period, Zweiman wished to create a visual symbol of protest as a contribution.

Designer Kat Coyle intended the Pussyhat to be easily replicable, giving it a simple pattern. Referring to how participants would appear at the Women's March, the project was envisioned as "a sea of pink, with each individual choosing their own shade, yet being part of a collective."

The idea for the Pussyhat Project emerged after the 2016 United States presidential election as a way to create a visible symbol of solidarity for women's rights. Suh and Zweiman, launched the project with the goal of providing pink, cat-eared hats for participants in the Women's March on Washington in January 2017. The project quickly gained momentum, with people around the world knitting and wearing pussyhats as a symbol of support for women's rights, reproductive rights, and opposition to the policies of the Trump administration.^{[citation needed]}

The creators state that the name refers to the resemblance of the top corners of the hats to cat ears while also attempting to reclaim the term pussy, a play on Trump's widely reported 2005 remarks that women would let him "grab them by the pussy." Many of the hats worn by marchers in Washington, D.C., were created by crafters who were unable to attend and wished them to be worn by those who could, to represent their presence. Those hats optionally contained notes from the crafters to the wearers, expressing support. They were distributed by the crafters, by yarn stores at the points of origin, carried to the event by marchers, and also distributed at the destination. The production of the hats caused reported shortages of pink knitting yarn across the United States. On the day of the march, NPR compared the hats to the "Make America Great Again" hats worn by Trump supporters, in that both represented groups that had at one point been politically marginalized; both sent "simultaneously unifying and antagonistic" messages; and both were simple in their messages.

Critics have insisted that the hats should be evaluated not as a symbolic political parody but instead according to a visual measure of inclusion, that is, by how realistically they represent the anatomy of all potential participants. In particular, criticism has noted how the hats do not represent the anatomy of transgender women (who may not have a vulva) or women of color whose "genitals are more likely to be brown than pink".

Professor Cáel Keegan, who teaches Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, said the hat's reference to pink vulvas was politically problematic for trans people: "any time feminism starts centering people based on anatomy, that gets kind of dangerous for trans people" who are also fighting for autonomy over their own bodies. He added that the knitted pink hats also do not reflect the anatomy of transgender women who have not opted for vaginoplasty surgery.