British Columbia is taking a step in the right direction, with the introduction of a private member’s bill meant to outlaw employers from forcing gender-based dress code restrictions—particularly ones relating to female workers and high heels.
Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party, and the politician who drafted the bill, doesn’t think it’s reasonable that businesses can force women to do their jobs in high heels. I agree.
To start with, I have a problem with any sort of law mandating any sort of non-essential attire for anyone. Anything short of peremptory, respectable business-casual in office settings or necessities like steel-toed boots and helmets at a work site, really has no practical application.
Another problem is that the disputed rule seems to disproportionately affect women, in particular. I can think of no equivalent requirement that creates as much discomfort and potential for injury for men, as mandated high heels for women.
A lot of people criticizing the Green Party’s move to try and respond to such an unfair stipulation in the law are suggesting such action would be redolent of the archetypal “nanny state,” didactically and overbearingly picking into the affairs of businesses and engaging in unnecessary interference.
Is this bill a harbinger of an overbearing government undermining the business community? Puh-lease.
I’m a pretty regular patron of an assortment of restaurants, bars, pubs taverns and other places in which waiters and waitresses serve in their capacity as purveyors of good things to eat and drink. I have no issue with what the latter of those two types of people wear when they are bringing me my food and drink, and always finding that crucial moment when my mouth is full to ask me: “How’s the meal?”
I also know many women from back east with whom I grew up, who work and have worked, in places where the absurd stipulation of mandatory high-heeled shoes was and is in place. What do they take away from work, every day? Sore feet.
I mean, it makes sense. Vancouver podiatrist Faiyaz Dedhar has gone on the record to say that high heels are the locus and provenance of an assortment of chronic feet conditions, including Achilles tendon problems, blisters, corns and calluses. Kind of says how good an idea it is to give people a choice in whether or not they wear them to work.
I can’t say I’m familiar with what it’s like to wear a pair of heels, but – bear with me, I’m reaching, here — I can’t imagine balancing on those things makes your job any easier.
I worked, as a teenager and while in university, at places where I was expected to be on my feet for long hours. I had the luxury of insoles and comfortable shoes. Even then, my feet and ankles would ache, and being about 30 to 40 pounds lighter than I am now, I wasn’t carrying around a whole lot of weight on my feet, either.
Outlawing mandated high heels is probably in the best interests of practicality. All considerations of sexism aside, getting rid of women needing to wear those impractical shoes makes them able to do their job more efficiently, and what reasonable business would be opposed to that?
Why are policies like that in place anyway? Are high-heeled shoes really necessitous in putting forward an image of “fanciness” or being “dressed up?” Are such policies simply remnants of a latent sexism laced into the codified rules of conduct, primarily in the service industry? Have these policies just been blithely accepted and unquestioned in the past, and are only coming into the light of official scrutiny and criticism?
I think the answer lies somewhere in between all those possibilities.
An interesting particular to the scenario unfolding in B.C. regarding the rules with footwear for women at work is that there are several other provincial parties, and business associations that are onboard with Weaver’s bill.
It’s a good way to make people’s lives easier at work, and weed out the rotten apples, when you take a look at who decries and opposes the proposed bill. All kinds of good things can stem from it.
