Good Lawyer Guide's response

Possibly, yes. It all depends on the reasonableness of the dress code imposed by your employer.

In a recent case, a male trainee police officer was told to cut his hair; he argued that female trainees did not have to cut their hair, and so it was unlawful sex discrimination to make him cut his hair. The Tribunal disagreed. Simply having a difference in treatment between the two sexes on one aspect of the dress code (eg cutting hair) does not necessarily mean that there is sex discrimination. What you have to do is to look at the dress code as a whole. What the Tribunal said in that case was that ‘a code that applies a conventional standard appearance is not in itself discriminatory; looking at the code as a whole, neither sex must be treated less favourably as a result of its enforcement’. So, the dress code imposed by the employer has to be looked at as an overall package.

But, that case involved the police force. There is a big difference between a job involving face-to-face contact with members of the public, where anemployer can reasonably expect you to look smart (because your image is part of the image of the business), and a business where you do not meet members of the public. So, if you have a backroom job it is less likely to be ‘reasonable’ for such a dress code to be imposed on you.