Quote Originally Posted by MartianDestiny View Post
Moving to short reach handlebars means there is less total reach from saddle to hoods. When you are struggling to reach the hoods well or can't quite get your fingers wrapped around that extra few millimeters to allow you to rotate out/down some really can help. A shorter stem may have the same effect but short reach bars are a less drastic change.

Or maybe I'm wrong?
This helped me a lot. My bike is a tiny bit large (as opposed to a lot small going one size down) so women's bars shortened the reach quite a bit.
Shortening the stem made my bike a bit too twitchy for me.