Beauty still trumps brains in too many workplaces

‘Lookism’ – the judging of an employee’s performance based on physical appearance – is not illegal, but arguably it should be, write Christopher Warhurst and Dennis Nickson

Universities position themselves as places where brains matter. It seems strange then that students at a US university would rate attractive academics to be better teachers.

This was the finding of a recent paper from the University of Memphis, which concluded that female academics suffered most from this.

It raises an uncomfortable proposition, that beauty trumps brains even in 21st century workplaces. It would certainly be supported by veteran female broadcasters such as radio presenter Libby Purves, who recently complained about the way the BBC dispenses with women of a certain age.

Another survey, this time in the UK, gave a deeper sense of the problem. It reported that employers were asking female employees to dress “sexier” and wear make-up during video meetings.

Published by law firm Slater and Gordon over the summer, and based on a poll of 2,000 office-based staff working from home during lockdown, the report found that 35 per cent of women had experienced at least one sexist demand from their employer, usually relating to how they dressed for video meetings. Women also reported being asked to wear more makeup, do something to their hair or dress more provocatively. Reasons offered by their bosses were that it would “help win business” and be “pleasing to a client”.

It seems as though the shift to more virtual working has not eradicated what Danielle Parsons, an employment lawyer at Slater and Gordon, described as “archaic behaviour” which “has no place in the modern working world”. When employees’ performance is judged on the basis of their physical appearance, potentially shaping their pay and prospects in work, it is known as lookism. It is not illegal, but arguably it should be.

The Slater and Gordon survey findings affirm that many trends that we describe in our recent book, Aesthetic Labour, are widespread and continuing despite remote working. Our book reports over 20 years of research and thinking about this problem. Although our research started by focusing on frontline work in hospitality and retail, the same issue has expanded into a diverse range of roles including academics, traffic wardens, recruitment consultants, interpreters, TV news anchors and circus acrobats.

Companies think that paying greater attention to employees’ appearance will make them more competitive, while public sector organisations think it will make them more liked. As a result, they are all becoming ever more prescriptive in telling employees how they should look, dress and talk.

It happens both to men and women, though more often to women, and is often tied in more broadly with sexualising them at work. For example, while Slater and Gordon found that one-third of men and women had “put up with” comments about their appearance during video calls, women were much likelier to face degrading requests to appear sexier.

When we analysed ten years of employees’ complaints about lookism to the Equal Opportunities Commission in Australia, we found that the proportion from men was rising across sectors but that twothirds of complaints were still from women. Interestingly, the University of Memphis study found no correlation for male academics between how their looks were perceived and how their performance