For those defending dress codes in the workplace, a go to argument tends to advocate how they help create a positive environment. Requiring employees to dress ‘business casual’ or ‘business formal’ can help employers to foster a professional working environment in which employees can easily separate their life at home from their life at work. Dress codes can also help individuals to feel part of a team where everyone is held to the same standards of appearance, regardless of their length of employment or position.
Despite good intentions of aiming to create an equal and collective professional environment, workplace dress codes can have the opposite effect. For a start, gender often begins to play a role in the implementation of an office dress code with regulations coming down more harshly or having a greater impact on female employees. Popular women’s fashion styles tend to be more eclectic and varied than men’s typical business attire, leaving women with more chances of breaching dress code policy. Importantly too, the standard women’s fashion is held to in dress codes regularly falls trap to the sexualisation of female bodies in a way that does not regularly apply to their male counterparts. Where a female employee may be called out for wearing a shirt that is too tight, on a male employee, the same case might be labelled as form-fitting or tailored. Furthermore, women are often held to varying standards simply based on body type. Certain articles of clothing on one body may be deemed inappropriate but acceptable on another. For example, taller women may be reprimanded more often for wearing the same length skirt as a woman of shorter height. Whilst dress codes can be said to foster feelings of togetherness and unity within a workplace, more often they can create separation between employees that reflect gendered double standards present in wider society.
The standardisation of office attire can have a negative impact on a variety of groups within the workplace. Dress codes are often binary-focused, lacking the nuance required to affirm LGBTQ+, transgender and gender non-conforming folks, for whom the confines of dress codes can have significant and very different consequences than for cisgender or gender-conforming individuals. Neurodivergent employees may also require more flexible dress codes that accommodate any sensory needs or enable the wearing of ‘safe’ articles of clothing that might not fit within a predetermined dress code. Despite good intentions, making individual exceptions to a dress code on a case-by-case basis may not necessarily be the best solution as employees could become singled out and isolated from the rest, undermining the desired sense of collectivity and equality in the workplace. Instead, a more flexible culture of dress could help cater to everyone’s needs where all employees can feel comfortable and be treated the same under one dress policy.
Deconstructing and reimagining dress codes is a small but vital step towards making work settings more accessible and inclusive. Creating an environment in which all employees can feel physically and mentally comfortable is important on a human level and at the level of performance too – happy workers, happy work!