Smart casual: female profs feel need to dress down

Last week, The Times Higher Education magazine and The Daily Mail both published stories containing claims that female dons feel like they have to look disheveled.

Stressed?

We all know some women, undergrads, postgrads or professors, who could probably do with a wardrobe revamp, but is it really true that women are doing this on purpose?

An image consultant to Oxford University told the press she had met “PhD scientists who are scared about looking in any way feminine or attractive”, with one even claiming she would not be ‘taken seriously’ if she did not wear Tesco t shirts and jeans to work.

Playing it safe

These were all women who attended a workshop run by the image consultant, Shenda Collins; do their views reflect those of postgraduate students and dons as a whole in Oxford?

Dr Helen Swift, a fellow at St Hilda’s, told us: “The evidence for concern about dress code that was cited derived, so far as I could tell, from conversations in the specific setting of self-development courses (i.e. where people would be most likely to be bringing the subject to the fore).

“What matters most in academics’ daily university life, I’d say, is communication: what I say, how I present myself orally to students, colleagues, etc.”.

Maryam Forshizi-Toyaz, a 3rd year Biomedical Engineer DPhil student at St Edmund Hall, concurs: “It’s not dictated, many of my friends dress really well when coming to labs, and there are those who have a scruffy look.

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“In labs no-one impresses by dress code, it’s rather the intellect that speaks. No matter how you dress, if you have done something impressive, then you are not only taken seriously, but people come to you for help, to talk, etc.

“Take Rich Walker, director of Shadow robots [a British robotics company], for example – you see him in street, if you just judge him by his looks, you would think all he does is smoking, but the guy is a genius.

Pothead or brainiac?

You could also look like Amy Mainzer [American astronomer] and be brainy at the same time.”

Amy Mainzer – not your typical scientist

But some people feel that this is an issue which has been hijacked by the latest wave of feminists.

One Daily Mail reader commented:  “This is a gratuitous excuse to forward the feminist agenda, which relies on the  perceived ‘victim status’ of women in order to survive.

“Flashiness in  all its forms has a negative impact on an academic’s ability to gain symbolic currency to work their way up the field of academia. It’s incidental that women’s displays of ‘flashiness’ tend to involve clothing whereas men aren’t generally as fussed about clothes.”

Have you noticed women in Oxford downplaying their looks in order to gain points for intellect?