The British government must strengthen existing laws to stop businesses from imposing sexist dress codes on female employees — including the mandatory wearing of heels — a parliamentary report says.
The joint report from the Petitions Committee and the Women and Equalities Committee, entitled High Heels and Workplace Dress Codes, found that sexist rules forcing women to wear high-heels, constantly re-apply make up or wear their hair in a particular style at work are still widespread among British companies, despite amounting to discrimination under the Equality Act.
The inquiry was launched after a petition calling for a law to stop firm from requiring women to wear high heels at work garnered over 150,000 signatures.
The woman behind the petition, Nicola Thorp, made headlines last year after she was sent home from a top London financial firm for refusing to wear two-inch high heels to the office.
After reviewing testimonies from hundreds of women, MPs found that these gender-specific rules are commonly imposed on female employees but not on their male counterparts.
The findings, published Wednesday, also highlight some of the psychological and physical impacts of rigid dress codes, such as chronic pain, impaired performance and psychological distress.
Women who were asked to wear high heels and skirts above the knee or to “flaunt themselves” by their employer, such as air hostesses, reported feeling sexualized and deterred from progressing within the company. Some even said their bosses encouraged them to unbutton their shirts more around Christmas time to boost sales to male shoppers, which they found “humiliating and degrading” and “demeaning”.
But MPs were also concerned that rules that reinforce gender stereotypes discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers.
They concluded that current legislation is not “not yet fully effective” and “obviously not working in practice” and recommended that the Government substantially increase the financial penalties available to employment tribunals against guilty employers.
Helen Jones MP, Chair of the Petitions Committee, said: “It’s not enough for the law to be clear in principle—it must also work in practice.
“The government has said that the way that Nicola Thorp was treated by her employer is against the law, but that didn’t stop her being sent home from work without pay.”
The report also suggests that the Government launch a public awareness campaign to help employers know their legal obligations, teach workers about their rights and how they can make formal complaints if they believe they have been discriminated against.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May, previously said when she was women’s minister in 2011 that “traditional gender-based workplace dress codes [ … ] encourage a sense of professionalism in the workplace.”