It’s not like there’s anything else we need to be doing at work, right?
Anyone else getting tired of being told how to dress, more often than not, by men? Just last week, female golfers were told to cover up to keep the focus on the game, while The University of Brussels came under fire for asking women to wear a ‘nice revealing neckline’.
And now new research has revealed that women are still being cautioned at worked for wearing clothes that are ‘a distraction to male colleagues’ - you know, just in case the whole gender pay gap thing wasn’t enough of an office challenge.
The study of 2,000 women, conducted by VoucherCodesPro, found that 35% have been cautioned over the length of their skirt, 30% for wearing ‘revealing’ clothing, 18% for wearing slogan t-shirts and a further 15% for ‘outfit flamboyance’.
And it’s not just the clothes we wear that’s an issue, because a further 46% of complaints were made about our make-up too. In case you need us to decode this for you, it basically means we can’t win.
Naturally, most women didn’t feel great about this, with most of them saying they felt ‘embarrassed’, ‘angry’ and ‘singled out’ at being called out for their appearance.
It probably won’t come as a shock either that only 9% of men have been cautioned for the way they look at work. And how do men react when they get told off? 72% of male respondents said they simply ‘shrugged it off’.
George Charles, spokesperson for VoucherCodesPro, told Metro.co.uk, ’It’s okay to pull up a member of your staff on their appearance if you genuinely believe that they’re breaking their contract in anyway, or even if it poses some sort of health & safety risk.’
He continued, ’But employers can’t just tell women to change their appearance because they’re possibly going to be distracting to their male colleagues. That’s outrageous.’
Hear hear.
