Head covering social rules in the United States have undergone great changes too. When I was a boy, an elderly woman in my church always wore a hat to services. She expressed annoyance that other women didn't, because to her it was simply a given that women's heads must be covered in those circumstances.

A few of the older women in our community even still wore sun bonnets outdoors, though that custom had died out as well. But I think that practice was always rooted more in practicality than in the traditions of indoor head covering. Men and women working on farms wore different sorts of head coverings outdoors to protect themselves from painful sunburns.