URSABLOG: Dressed for Success?

It all started with a bit of teasing in the classroom a couple of weeks ago. I asked one of my students:

“So why aren’t you coming to the party next week?”

“I have to have some surgery on my ankle” she said.                                                   

“Really? Something serious?” I asked.

 “Not really, but I can’t wear high heels otherwise, and I have to for work” she replied.

 “What?” I said, “You have to?”

 “Yes, it’s compulsory for women”. 

“All women? Every department?” 

“Oh yes”.

 Maybe I should not have been shocked, but the fact that one of my students was having surgery so she could then wear the ‘right’ shoes to work struck me as extreme. This attitude of course is not restricted to Greece, or shipping. Back in December 2015, Nicola Thorp, a temporary worker in London was sent home during her first day as a receptionist at PwC for declining to wear high heels. She started an online petition on the subject, and the employment agency that got her the work eventually dropped its requirement for female staff to wear heels between two and four inches high.

 But why does this bother me? I like women in high heels, but I like them in flats and barefooted as well. Shoes are not something I spend too much time on. I like women, full stop, and I am obviously not alone. It is very difficult, perhaps foolish, to try and unwind my thoughts on men and women, sex, work and power, but I will give it a go because it remains on my mind.

I think work place dress should be appropriate to the work and the environment. At Ursa we dress appropriately: we will sharpen up for special meetings, less so for informal meetings or day-to-day desk work. There are fairly universal rules of acceptable smart dress, but within those limits both men and women should be free to wear what they want. It is perfectly acceptable to ask workers to conform to a minimum standard of appearance as a condition of employment. Requiring workers to be neat or even, if required, to wear a uniform is perfectly ok.

Dress rules are often unspoken and unwritten, and cultural. They have also changed a great deal since when I started work, when a suit and tie were necessary. When I visit London now I can’t work out when a tie is needed or not. Maybe I should follow the example of Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, and just never wear a tie at all. But being an Englishman, I I know I would feel almost naked in certain situations without one.

Clothes make us look good. When I put on a dinner suit, very rarely these days sadly, I feel smart and handsome. Making an effort on our appearance gives us extra self-confidence. Indeed many women friends tell me that putting on a pair of heels gives them, for want of a better phrase, girl power, just as me getting a suit from the cleaners and polishing my best black shoes gives me a sense of invincibility. Being a sharp dresser implies that we can cut it. But suits are not magic armour, and heels are not turbo powered.

I think my problem with the compulsory wearing of high heels is that it smells of inequality, not just of men against women, but of the criteria used when employing staff. It is an abuse of power, a power that is worse because it plays on the sexualising of women in what is meant to be a professional environment.

Back in 2008 when I was setting up the office for HSBC Shipping Services in Piraeus, HSBC Greek head office helpfully sent me a few CVs for a PA. They were all qualified, but they were also all accompanied by photos, most taken professionally (this was the time before universal selfies) to accentuate the beauty and femininity of the applicant. I rejected all of them and employed someone else.

To this day I tend to reject most CVs that come with photos, for men or women. I think that a photo distracts from the real point of a CV, i.e. to show what people have done in their lives and whether they are suitable for employment.

There is more than this though, and this is where I start walking on very thin ice. We all know that better looking people tend to be more successful than those less fortunate. It is genetic and we are hard wired, reproductively speaking, to respond to it. It is a fact of life, however much we would like to think otherwise. The matching hypothesis, developed over the last fifty years, has proven that people are more likely to have longer lasting relationships with someone who is equally socially desirable, and this is interpreted mostly by looks, physical attraction.

Back in 1966 Elaine Hatfield and others suggested that successful couples of differing physical attractiveness may be together due to other matching variables that compensate for the difference in attractiveness. Some men with wealth and status desire younger, more attractive women. On the flip-side some women are more likely to overlook shortfalls in physical attractiveness for men who possess wealth and status. I would like to make the point here that this, at least, is far less universal. Either way none of this should come as a surprise.

But this has nothing to do with the work place. If a man employs women based purely on looks, unless he is a fashion designer, or runs a model agency, he has no excuse, not for his business at least, to insist on sexualising the workplace. Surely you want the best for your company? If you think that the best for your business is to have the best looking women with the best legs, and you run shipping company, then I suspect that you have problems. Such a work environment will not be conducive to running ships, unless you think a highly unpleasant and competitive atmosphere (with inappropriate male behaviour thrown in) is the best way to run your business. Maybe it works, but I bet your employee turnover is high.

Don’t get me wrong, Women should be perfectly free to dress how they like but if people are using beauty, or sexuality, to sell themselves where it is not appropriate or necessary then surely we should be careful.

Standards are not, and need not be, identical for men and women but there is difference between asking a woman to look smart and then asking her to dress in a stereotypically feminine, sexualised way. Some women may prefer to dress that way and I have nothing against that. But making high heels compulsory is pandering to a certain type of sexual imagery that encourages making women sex objects and tacitly gives men the permission to take advantage of that. It reinforces attitudes about appearance and male authority in the workplace. It stinks. But it is also self-defeating for the company too: if women employees suffer then surely the company suffers. Shipping is a conservative industry but this does not mean that we have to perpetuate outdated attitudes.

I have a sneaking suspicion that men in positions of power that insist on how women dress are not gentlemen, in or outside the workplace. This may seem a bit old fashioned word, and even misogynist in itself, but for me at least, men who take advantage of other people for their own benefit, or because of their own insecurities and weaknesses, are not people that I would want to do business with. They probably don’t want to do business with me either.

I am still trying to work out why this has been bothering me so much. I suspect that amongst other things, the core reason is that education and training are extremely important to me. I believe in meritocracy, and giving people of all backgrounds the means to grow to their full potential. After people have worked hard, educated themselves and got themselves into a position to be hired, to then be told a condition of employment is to wear high heels just seems so ridiculous, and so soul destroying than we can easily lapse into cynicism.

It is my hope that sensible men and women in positions of power look to improve their businesses by employing people on the basis that they can do stuff and are given the freedom do it to the best of their ability. That means being blind to gender, and looks, and hiring the best available at the time. I am proud that 25% of Ursa’s broking staff are women, and are employed on merit. It’s not perfect but few shipbroking companies I know have a similar ratio, in Greece or elsewhere.

The women in our office sometimes wear high heels, other times they don’t: it’s their choice. Choice, especially in an area as personally sensitive as how we choose to present ourselves to the world, should not be restricted by an employer or office manager who thinks that holding a position of power is an excuse to sexualise the workforce. Apart from just being plain wrong, it’s pathetic and that in the end says more about the employer than the employees.  

Simon Ward

www.ursashipbrokers.com