Weaponized Dress Codes and Kenyan workplaces

                          

 

"Whenever she put on a skirt not too long I would tell her, ‘Joyce, this skirt is short’,” ~ Dep Pres Ruto

The degraded quality of the citizenship of Kenyan women is clearly seen in just how gung-ho society is to restrict female autonomy, including basics like the choice of apparel.  The funeral of Gov Laboso gave us a peek into how even extremely powerful leaders, are behind the scenes, still treated as empty debes that need to be instructed on how to dress. The Deputy President reportedly ‘charmed mourners’ and ‘drew laughter from the crowd’ by this post-mortem chastisement of Gov Laboso. Less charming or funny, is that someone can be mandated to run Bomet county (latest count 900,000+ citizens), but the length of her skirt still needs supervision! 

Unfortunately, the Deputy President is in good company. This unwanted and unnecessary policing of women is seen in Kenyan workplaces all across the country where dress codes are used to reproduce sexism and misogyny that reinforce societal attitudes of women’s role in the workplace. It is an unfortunate truth that a woman’s worth, and the right to bodily autonomy is still determined by men.  At a recent Hivos Creative Dialogue, where the issue of dress codes and sexual harassment was discussed, it was sobering to hear just how often dress codes are used to justify and perpetuate sexual harassment.

“Dress Codes were modeled in the image of men” ~ Andrew Odete

In the words of Andrew Odete, a panelist at the Creative Session, the dress code was “modeled in the image of men”.  Truly. Further, this dress code is also modeled in the image of the ‘ideal man’ which is as close to the Western Caucasian ideal as possible. Decades into independence, these identity issues continue to play out in workspaces, where in the words of Uduak Amimo, the Kenyan media faces an identity crisis. It’s never quite reconciled itself to the fact that a typical Kenyan will have hair that grows naturally curly and bushy out of their scalp. And where hair this powerful meets dress codes that views afros, bantu knots, and dreadlocks as ‘untidy and unprofessional,’ then the recourse is to ban ‘natural hair’ in favor of weaves, relaxed hair, and other Western-looking hair. 

Beyond this existential angst of what constitutes beauty, extremely pernicious is the weaponizing of dress codes to either demonize women who dress “indecently” as well as those that commodify and hypersexualize women as a job requirement. During the Creative Dialogue, it became abundantly clear that while all industries face this issue, some sectors and some professions are more vulnerable than others. Particularly affected by hyper-sexualization, are customer-facing women (e.g. women in sales and marketing, TV anchors, hotel and restaurant workers, etc). 

What was also clear, was that hyper-sexualization continues to happen because the workplace primarily caters (and panders) to the male gaze, despite women being consumers of media and services. It is still a world where employers expect women to dress ‘sexily’ to entice customers because ‘Sex sells’. A statement that is both problematic and also assumes a world where women are neither colleagues nor customers.

 

The flip side of the coin is also a world where women are also expected to “wear decent clothes” and thus allow fragile men to work in peace unmolested by the sight of female thighs or breasts. It also creates precarity for women who dress a certain way in that that they can be sexually harassed for noncompliance to the dress code.

 

What’s the problem?

And while organizations have the right to enforce dress codes for workplaces, what should concern Kenyans are dress codes that reproduce sexism and misogyny in the workplace.  Generally, if you unpack the dress code for men, you will find that it concentrates mainly on formalities (color, description of items). Women’s dress codes on the other hand will typically be about shame and/or sexualization of women (dress "decently", "non-suggestively" etc). 

The respectability politics that infuse the dress codes continue to be perpetuated both by men and women. In Kenya, sessions on how a successful woman should dress are a growth industry, with fellow women policing each other. Under the policing is a desperate move to try and conform. It's a “Tunaomba serikali ya wanaume!” desperation to show how female dressing is close enough to male dressing to placate men into allowing women to stay in the workplace. So we distance ourselves from ‘slay queens’ and other women who choose to wear clothes that make men uncomfortable so as to ensure our continued survival in the male-dominated workplace. And while this sort of pragmatism is perhaps understandable in ‘why’ it happens, as proponents of feminist workspaces, we should constantly work to dismantle these rules that were arbitrarily created by and modeled on the white heterosexual male. We should keep railing against rules that are preserved by Kenyan society and followed religiously because that’s the way ‘decent professionals’ should dress despite the harm these rules cause women.

Because it’s wrong. And harmful.  These policies interrupt women’s productive time in the workplace. They send messages to men that how women look is more important than what they do in the workplace. They perpetuate the nonsense that women are responsible for the actions of men. They perpetuate bogus economic logic that falsely links the action of covering an extra two inches of thigh or breast to decreased labor production. They also – in the case of hyper-sexualization- perpetuate a myth that women in addition to selling widgets, are also part of the sale.

So what’s good?

Generally, a good workplace dress code should not discriminate, or penalize female employees. Some sensible guidelines /questions which borrow from this Dress Code Policy could include:-

• Does it undermine the dignity of employees?
• Does it allow for employee agency (can women choose to wear clothes that cover them up more/ less?)
• Does it impose a higher burden on women in the workplace
• Does it put women at risk and/ or does it increase their vulnerability?
• Does it hinder women’s ability to participate in the workforce by e,g, restricting movement?
• Does it impose a higher burden on women than on men to be in the workplace.

 

 "You teach your daughters how to rub poison on their skin. Remember to teach your sons how not to be serpents.” ~Ijeoma Umebinyu

If you unpack the stricture “Vaa decent!” and its variants, it is yet another limit to female autonomy. It is a continuation of what was begun in school “Don’t wear skirts that are too tempting!” - including those who attended all girls’ boarding schools! We should use every opportunity to challenge these assumptions that continue to shame women for existing in the workplace. We should work on policies that embrace, rather than reduce women’s participation in the workplace.

 

Anything less would be charming the patriarchy.