Queensland girl loses legal fight over school’s ‘sexist’ skirt rule

A female student who took her school to the Human Rights Commission over its “unfair and sexist” school uniform policy has had her case dismissed — in part because most other girls chose to wear skirts, not pants.

The girl, who along with the school can not be named for legal reasons, decided to take on the school soon after it introduced a policy requiring female students to wear skirts on formal occasions.

Under the policy, female students in years 7 to 12 must wear a skirt to formal school occasions, including school outings or excursions, school ceremonies and events, class photographs, awards nights and external events.

However, male students are allowed to wear shorts or trousers, which are their usual school uniform.

The girl, whose father acted on her behalf in legal proceedings, complained to the Queensland Human Rights Commission, which then referred the matter to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal for a ruling.

The girl argued the school’s uniform policy was sexist because it barred her from wearing pants and meant she could face punishment if she didn’t comply.

She claimed it was sexist on a number of fronts, including a negative psychological effect from having to wear a skirt, arising from “negative gender stereotypes and gendered power relations” and because “traditional gender identities were entrenched by the clear visual divide between female and male students”.

She said wearing a skirt sexualised female students because underwear may be exposed.

The girl also said she would suffer a greater financial burden than a male student because she would have to purchase two sets of school uniforms and she would have to take greater care to maintain modesty when sitting to ensure the skirt was properly covering her.

And in cooler weather, she would not be as warm as a male student who could wear trousers — even if wearing stockings. On excursions she would be restricted in the physical activity she could do compared with a male student.

If she refused to wear a skirt, the girl feared she could face negative consequences of exclusion or suspension or other lesser consequences not faced by a male student.

In its response, the school described the allegations as “offensive and baseless”.

It contended that the policy was reasonable because it only applied to events for about eight hours a year — unless a student was in the school band or was selected to attend other specifically formal external occasions.

And it said that other than school photos, the events are all seated events that occur indoors and none of them involve physical activity.

Tribunal member Jeremy Gordon dismissed her complaint, finding the school did not discriminate against the girl, “either directly or indirectly”.

In part, this was because the overwhelming majority of female students, who did not have to wear a skirt on ordinary school days and could instead wear culottes, shorts or trousers, chose to wear a skirt.

“It appears from the statistics provided by the school that female students were generally content to wear skirts. This means that if, for one reason or another, the complainant did not want to wear a skirt on formal occasions, this view was not shared by other female students,” Member Gordon wrote in his findings.

He found that the female student could have applied for an exemption to wearing a skirt on informal occasions but had not done so.

“The evidence is insufficient to show that the formal occasion uniform policy resulted in, or would have resulted in, less favourable treatment of the complainant as a female student over male students,” he wrote.

“To put this another way, there was different treatment between the sexes, but the evidence does not show that the different treatment was unfavourable to the complainant.”

The tribunal ordered that the school and the student not be identified because the student was aged under 18.