We saw yet another news story recently about a female employee who was told by her employers what to wear in the office, which employment solicitors warn breaches sex discrimination laws.
Liberté Chan is a meteorologist (‘weather girl’ is considered demeaning these days) who was handed a cardigan live on air after viewers complained that it was too showy or revealing.
This is an American news story but it has gained international attention and is relevant to several recent news stories in the UK touching on work uniforms including this one and another that we reported on in our blog.
It may well give grounds for resigning and claiming constructive dismissal if your employer embarrasses you in front of colleagues / customers (or viewers in this case). Although the fact that live tv brings a very wide audience, publicity and little time to give properly-weighed consideration probably lowers the bar for the employer.
Employment solicitors have noted that it is overwhelmingly women who feature in these stories about what to wear at work. Men’s clothing appears never to be policed. This on the face of it is ‘institutionalised sex discrimination’ but to win a tribunal claim on this you would need to show that you in particular were treated that way because of your sex. It is a different thing altogether to show this in an individual case.
As we’ve said before, sex discrimination law recognises that the sexes have different bodies and that there are different cultural norms (it is normal for men to wear ties but unusual for women, who can show leg but men do not). The law allows employers to impose different dress codes on men and women for this reason.
This is odd from a conceptual point of view. The whole point of laws against direct sex discrimination (about treating men and women differently because of their sex) is to change cultural norms where necessary. That is why employers can no longer pay married women less or refuse to employ people of colour, which used to be common and even socially acceptable. So it is peculiar that a form of direct discrimination is permitted because it is socially acceptable.
However the law will step in if a certain boundary is crossed, it’s just that no-one knows where that is because so few cases come to tribunal. Our experience is that judges are very interested in picking on women for their clothing at work and will give the employee the benefit of the doubt when it comes to showing that it was different treatment; then the question becomes whether it was on the ground of their sex and the employer tends to get the benefit of the doubt about this issue of what is the cultural norm.