One in four women have been cautioned about their appearance in the workplace, according to new study

Shutterstock
Harriet Pavey26 July 2017

One in four women have been cautioned about their appearance in the workplace, and nearly half of the time it’s about make-up, a study has found.

The survey of more than 2,000 Britons found that women are singled out for their looks far more than men. Just nine per cent of male respondents had been told off for what they looked like.

When a woman hit the headlines after being sent home from her temp job for refusing to wear high heels, the government pledged to publish new dress code guidelines for employers this summer. But the guidelines are yet to appear.

And it’s not just dress codes that are the problem. Alarmingly, managers deemed female workers “a distraction” to their male counterparts in 35 per cent of cases.

“Too much make-up” was the most complained about appearance issue, closely followed by skirt length.

Nancy Roberts was working for a well-known book publisher when she was cautioned for her skirt choice: “I was told on my second day in my very first job that I was dressing ‘too provocatively’ – in a knee-length black skirt and flat knee-high boots.

“My boss was a woman.”

Summer workwear - in pictures

1/5

Bridie Pearson-Jones, a former retail assistant at a popular department store, said: “Loads of us used to get told off for our skirt length. I once got told off for a knee-length pencil skirt that was clearly for business dress.

“My manager said: ‘It's nice for clubbing, not so much for work.’”

Other warnings included tops deemed too revealing (30 per cent), slogan t-shirts (18 per cent), and outfit flamboyance (15 per cent.)

Men were reprimanded mainly for not being clean shaven and their choice of footwear.

George Charles, spokesperson for VoucherCodesPro.co.uk, who conducted the survey, said: “It’s OK 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 and safety risk, but you just can’t tell women to change their appearance because they’re possibly going to be distracting to their male colleagues. That's outrageous.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT