It's currently legal to force women to wear high heals to work. Post Reply

[MMmmm]

I'm shocked to read that it's currently legal for an employer to require female staff to wear high heals at work.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36265545

For anyone equally outraged to learn that we are living in a country that finds this acceptable, I urge you to sign the petition...

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/129823

Let's help get this to 100,000 signatures so this can be addressed by lawmakers.

[juliantenniscoach]

Who knew PWC was Spearmint Rhino in disguise?

[papinian]

I am (happily) surprised that this story is getting so much attention. In my experience the sort of attitudes to women exhibited by PWC's service provider are rife in certain institutions in the City.

I remember when law firm Freshfields hired image consultants to tell its female staff to wear high heels with skirts rather than trousers to "embrace their femininity"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... inity.html

Some firms are known for this sort of attitude and it likely rebounds on them because it puts off candidates from applying.

[jg75]

I can vouch for Papinian's story - I have a number of ex Freshfields friends who definitely had a talk by an image consultant as trainees and were given style advice as to what to wear. I remember them laughing about the fact they were advised to wear skirts instead of trousers... Apparently the rules were much more prescriptive for women than men. May not be the case any more, though, that was about 10 years ago.

It may not have been firm policy, but quite a clear message going out to all trainees if the style consultant gave regular talks...

[papinian]

Thanks jg75. I wish mungomuffit didn't feel the need to troll every post I make here - even the ones agreeing with her!

[TLS]

The Freshfields story was 100% accurate 10 yrs ago, I am not sure what current trainees get told but RollOnFriday would bea good source of info. It's outrageous, obviously. The simple answer is to choose to work in less outdated institutions.

[Canook]

I worked at a Magic Circle law firm. They did have stylists and image consultants come in to talk to the trainees but their suggestions were only suggestions, not requirements. Their advice was quite helpful as many trainees were coming out of university and needed pointers on how to dress professionally every day on a budget.

[hal]

If someone suggested this at my City law firm they would be rightly burned alive in our atrium. Unsurprisingly, given that this isn't 1815, women wear whatever footwear they want to wear that they know to be professionally appropriate. By choice it tends to be heels in meetings and in Court, and flats at their desks or around the office, but no one could care less provided they are smart (same as with the men).

On a related note, I've hired several lawyers (women and men) from Freshfields into my team and, whilst working at FFs has its own issues, they say that this does not in any way reflect the culture there. All law firms get these external consultants coming in to talk to them about some ludicrous suggested working practice or another. Most are ignored or occasionally laughed at, and none whatsoever are policy makers. We had one recently who told a bunch of our women lawyers how in order to be taken seriously they needed to take up more space and adopt power postures. She provided endless fun.

[MGMidget]

Apart from the 'sexist' nature of any requirement to wear high heals there could be a bit of a health issue. To give you a couple of examples: some people may have a weakness/problem with one or both knees or a back problem making high heels uncomfortable to wear and potentially worsening their problem! Also, pregnant ladies might find it difficult teetering around in high heels given their point of gravity will have shifted and they won't want to be falling over when heavily pregnant!

[Furzedown Dad]

I worked at Freshfields for several years, and attended the session that the article refers to when I was a trainee.

Sorry if this bursts anyone's bubble, but back then, the session didn't even represent guidelines, let alone rules. It was done once a year, to the new intake, for a very short time, and was actually seen as a bit of fun at the end of quite a gruelling induction process. The South African lady who presented it was very engaging and had some really useful style tips (for the men as well as the women!). The whole session was very light hearted in tone, and at no time were we told we had to follow any of the advice. I can tell you that none of the women in my intake were the remotest bit upset or affronted - and we talked about it a lot, especially as it was getting a bit of press at the time.

Throughout my several years at the firm, women wore whatever they liked (within reasonable professional limits obviously!). Skirts or trousers: nobody cared. Flats or heels: nobody cared.

And for the record Freshfields, while suffering the same problem as the vast majority of large law firms in that women are under-represented in the partnership, has for many years taken steps to try and remedy that - genuine availability of flexible working and an internal women's mentoring scheme spring to mind. Long way to go obviously, but to try and paint it as some sort of boy's club dinosaur is not accurate (and wouldn't have been accurate 10 years ago).

[kinka]

Dear Ladies !

I love wear a high heals! I understand some women may don't like it, and I don't see anything wrong with it.
Let say the high heals are 'part of your uniform' and you have to wear it if is needed. Everyone takes this very personal, but this is just pare of shoes.

[Bescottier]

PwC's blog response for interest:

http://pwc.blogs.com/the_people_agenda/ ... ht-us.html