Business casual – moi-meme.com
It’s summertime, and in case you haven’t noticed, business dress is getting more and more…relaxed, to say the least. Considering most companies and businesses nowadays have adopted business casual dress codes, office fashion’s standards have definitely changed.
While some of us celebrate this more relaxed approach to dressing for work, women and minorities are left wondering if the trend is really in our favor. According to the 2012 Catalyst’s Alliance for Board Diversity census, minority women represented 2.6% of Fortune 500 board leadership positions. With a blatant gap in leadership representation, minority women, and women in general, may not be as inclined to adopt a relaxed approach towards anything pertaining to their careers, including the dress code.
Not to mention obvious perception issues associated with women and minorities’ dress. Not only is it easier for women to be recognized as leaders when they’re more formally dressed, but it also helps that their fashion choices err more on the masculine side. Remember back in 2007 when Hillary Clinton was the topic of a vehement (and lengthy) article in the Washington Post around her…“dip into neckline territory”? Yes, that neckline…
And while the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world can certainly afford to conduct business in sneakers and hoodies, and actually stand out in a positive light, as described here, the rest of us may not enjoy as much professional bandwidth.
So really, as the temperatures rise and the business casual trend follows suit, does the whole business casual thing hurt us more than we thought?
The Corporate Sister.
