Dress Code Hypocrisy At Indian Workplaces

I don't know if this is really an issue. Here in the US, the rules for men and women are as detailed. Maybe a longer laundry list for women. There is regulation on many things, length of the skirt, no crop pants, no sleevless or a limit on the kind of sleeveless one can wear. It is quite detailed and rightly so. If I limit my study space to desis in my work setup, the women are far better dressed than the men. A lot of them will land up unshaven and wearing sandals.

For a very short while I worked in India, our organisation (HCL) had issued instructions against us wearing jeans to work on any other day except Friday. The women were supposed to wear either salwar kameez/sari or western formals and no there was no hullabo over it.

By and large, the IT industry is a bit lax. The disparity between the New york financial firms and the Silicon valley setups is stark.

Here is the dressing policy from my organisation. As you can see there is moe for women than men.

"
shorts or "skorts" (shorts/skirt combination); tank tops; sweat suits; capri pants (with hems between the knee and the calf); cargo pants; sneakers, or any type of athletic attire. Jeans (or any other denim items) and sneakers otherwise not appropriate during the work week are allowed on Fridays. Employees should also refrain from wearing clothing with pictures or writing (with the exception of the company logo); low-cut blouses and tops (including halters), and any spandex, Lycra or similar form-fitting articles.
"

Ritu, the issue is in India alone. And I saw it first hand. The men absolutely had to wear western formals. Most days it was dress pants, long sleeved shirt and tie. But for meetings, they absolutely HAD to wear a formal western-style suit.

However, us ladies in management were allowed to wear salwar suits to basically anything, including high-level buisness meetings. And some of these women would wear just any old salwar suit they had... the pants might be too short, the top too tight, the dupatta stained or not ironed. It seems to them any old salwar would do. and do not get me started on the condition of some of the saris at meetings. it looked like they slept in them for days before coming to work.

men must wear closed shoes. no chappals allowed. Women come in wearing their Bata bath slippers with foul looking feet caked with dirt and toenails looking like they belong to a Yetti and not a businesswoman.

why the double standard?

I must admit I, too, took advantage of the lax rules for women. Even for high level meetings I wore salwar suits or a sari. but you'd better believe the ones I wore were perfectly cleaned, pressed and they style was appropriate for a meeting. I made sure if I was going to wear Indian dress I was going to look damned good doing it.

Still, as Deepti mentioned, if one of the men on the management team had showed up in fancy kurta and pyjamas for a meeting they would have been immediately sent home.

Either the women should be forced to wear western formals or the men should be allowed to wear traditional Indian style dress.

Wearing ties to work is silly. Wearing shoddy clothes to work is unacceptable. However, companies need to find a balance. Our weather conditions (ACs at work notwithstanding) donot make wearing a tie to work a simple process. However, I feel wearing ties to client meetings is a very good thing.
Woman also have a dress code to work in many companies. Obviously the options are wider than for men. Salwar Kameez/ Saree or 'smart' western formals it is. In some companies the manual specifies - 'acceptable' casual wear :-).

Even though it is idiosyncratic the way things have been in urban India since the early part of the century that men have predominantly used western wear and women Indian wear as formal dressing. Even in the most formal functions women can wear sarees and it is considered absolutely formal. It is how you wear the saree and what type of saree you would wear. For our campus interviews we had to wear sarees and there were rules. Neutral colours, neatly pinned up and properly ironed. Printed silks were preferred. You obviously could not get away wearing a Kanjeevaram.

I think the rules in India need to be a little more detailed. But expecting women to wear western wear or men to be allowed to wear India wear is carrying it a bit far if you ask me. Formal attire is based upon what a large section of population is comfortable with. The reality of India is that normal everyday attire for men in western and for a large section of women... still Indian.

If your accounts are true then yes, there needs to details on what kind of footwear and what kind of saree/salwar kameez. Up north in Delhi where I worked there was not a single women I have ever seen dressed in Hawai chappals at work. And this was an IT company. You found girls wearing neatly starched fab india suits looking very presentable. But then, my observation has been that up north esp. in Delhi people are far more appearance centric than in other parts of the country.

If you ask me honestly, even though salwar kameez has become the national dress of India, I still think formal occasions demand a saree.

Why have a dress code? If your work does not involve representing your organization to outsiders (unlike doctors, marketing, sales etc.), why bother dressing up? Employees will work better if they are comfortable in what they are dressed in, be it shabby salwars, open toed shoes, shorts or flip flops.

@ Ajay

The question is not on 'why' formals but what is passable for men and women. And different standards for both.

The 'why' is also important- wearing formals gives the air of looking professional. It gives the work place the air of seriousness.

Per se I have nothing against women wearing ethnic clothes but the same should also be applicable to men. Nothing wrong with the Indian ethnic wear for men at workplaces provided the clothes are clean and well ironed.

It shows pride in our culture and heritage.

In the company I worked for in Bangalore, many guys would come to work wearing sandals. But this was a techie company.

The other side of the coin, I have come across marketing guys who dress up very professionally (tie et all), but who would stink at the same time. They don't seem to bother washing their clothes and socks regularly as much as they pay attention to the looks. Plus they should use some kind of deo for heaven's sake.

When I ran a modeling agency in Mumbai everyone wore denims to work. The only rules I laid down were "no sneakers or rubber sandals/ slippers". T shirts had to be without messages. I didn't mind guys wearing kurtas teamed up with leather sandals or slippers.

The last thing we needed was a coordinator with a bad dress sense giving tips to models on how to dress up.

Thankfully nobody tried to "bend" the rules or protest.

Well, I guess dress code goes with the company 'TYPE' and 'policy'.

Some organizations (like auto-manufacturers, fast food joints) need uniforms. Ones into sales, marketing, advertising and hospitality services (a lot of customer interaction) need tip-top state of the art formal wear.

Some back-end pure product design corporations (like the one where I work) don't have a very strict dress code. For example, in Google, you can come to work wearing T-shirts, bermudas and slippers, sipping Coke and listening to your I-POD (it's a FACT, my friend has worked there and has told me!)

However, I feel uncomfortable myself when I see people dressed with coats and ties in this hot humid climate which is generally prevalent over the country. That is really ridiculous.

Also, offices can save on a lot of electricity and help the enviroment by keeping the A.C.s at higher temperatures with more wind flow (say 27 deg. C) and asking employess to wear light cotton clothing, (instead of keeping them at a freezing 18 deg. C)

As for my personal dress sense, it should not matter really what type of clothes (western or traditional) one is wearing, if they satisfy the following crietia-
1a. Clean and smelling good.
1b. Proportionate w.r.t the body type and symmetric. (not too loose or tight)
2. Well-ironed and crisp.
3. Without broken buttons, holes, patches and threads sticking out.
4. Moderately conservative. (no unnecessary skin show)
5. No offensive logos or messages.
6. Balanced colours.

And going along with the theme of the article, it should apply equally to men and women.

Anecdote-
*There was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the official dress for Bengali men in Calcutta offices was a crisp cotton shirt and a dhoti!
That combo actually was very comfortable in hot-humid Calcutta during those days when most offices did not have ACs and had slow, creaky ceiling fans.

One had the image of a typical Bengali clerk-babu travelling to office in a tram - crisp cotton shirt with a fountain pen tucked in the pocket, big HMT steel wrist-watch, loose dhoti, pot-belly, 'thola' in hand, thick dark specks..:-)
You can see that in many old Bengali films of that period.

Love and peace to all,
Ayan

At my office, there is no dress code, and most of the women dress smart but most of the men come to office wearing those 10 year old bata sandals with totally unkempt dirty feet.

I think accepting salwar kameez as formal wear should be okay, but there should be guidelines on the kind of print/colors/footwear etc that is acceptable.

Maybe a distinction between good grooming and dressing up needs to be made here. Frankly, I still do not see the need to 'dress-up' to work. But I whole heartedly agree that personal hygiene is absolutely required.

"If men are not allowed to wear Indian formals to work why should the women be allowed to wear salwaar kameezes and horrendous worn out sandals to work?"

You completely missed the point.

It is not about western and indian anymore. It is about what urban Indians wear. Women still wear saares, salwar suit and jeans. However Indian women do not wear western formals. So why force something which is not prevalent.
On the other hand, hardly any urban Indian male ever wears traditional clothes.

That's why, most companies in India which have formal dress code do not insist on formal western clothing for women, because HR guys understand that doing so would be counter-intuitive and ridiculous.

the issue is there in other countries too like bangladesh, paksitan etc.

i have personally seen in many companies and banks that there are extremely strict dress codes for men. in audit firms for eg even the color of the shirts are limited and they cannot even fold their sleeves etc.
but i can see women over there wearing fancy colored shalwar kameez and sandals.

the big issue is being missed out here. its not "if men are made to wear formal then why not women."

the bigger issue is that it clearly shows one thing.....that a strict formal dress code does not have any effect on the quality of work and professionalism. am i right MNC bosses? or would you say that women are not as efficient in their work with their fancy shalwar kameez?

but they will hate to admit this. a strict formal dress code has no relation with competency, professinalism, efficeincy etc. if there was any link then women would be required to follow a strict code as well.

In my assessment, the dress code for women, though it exists, is not enforced, for fear of appearing 'sexist', so it exists only on paper. That is the double standard, not whether there should be a dress code or not, and not that there is a different one for men and for women. The dress code is not enforced equally and consistently for men and women

I doubt there is any dress code for women even "on paper" in any Indian company, unless we are dealing with customer service/front desk type of jobs. ICICI bank requires their female branch employees to wear salwar uniforms on certain days. But the scene at their back offices is entirely different.

Also I agree, business suits (with stockings) would look ridiculous and out of place in India.

So Indian men look good in Western wear but women would look ridiculous in similar clothes?

And women look gorgeous in stockings.

Don't you they allow salwar suits and sarees because its uncommon to see a woman in a business suit in India? And they are just giving you that freedom? Where as guys have been in shirts and trousers more or less all their life, and ties in schools as well. The companies are just complying with the prevalent culture. If they enfored the "women in suits" rule, I bet there's be some sort of a protest in India.
I'd blame it on the women who don't present themselves professionally.

Dee... I could have seen these responses coming a mile away. logically thinking one would think that men would want the women to be held to the same rules. but no, they are so frightened by the thought of women being allowed to branch out and have some freedoms it makes them regressive.

guys, let us worry about the clothes, nah? I wore a business suit in India and was just fine. and women would adapt. and if the ladies of kingfisher airlines can do it, I am sure that women who have brains to go with their beauty can manage as well. :)

@ Dee: It is not a matter of looking good in stockings, it is a matter of being comfortable and confident in them. Even here in the US a large section of Indian women prefer the pant-suit over skirts. There is a large section of Indian population that is not comfortable with it.

And at the end of the day a formal attire is something in which you can be well turned out and confident. Saree, salwar kameez, western wear anything should work as long as it is neat, crisp and business-like. If you cannot walk straight wearing a saree then a saree is not a good business formal for you. In a country like India where a large population is still not comfortable with western wear, it is silly to enforce it.

Talking of this whole thing reminds me of an incident in college. My friend and I were responsible putting together a march past squad for our annual sports day for our department. Deciding the costumes was also our job. At college level people come from schools all over Delhi and are thus subscribe to different ethos. Both my friend and I were very used to shorts and short length skirts (which are best for marching because they don't fly up like a long skirt) and that's what we acquired for the squad. It was an unmitigated disaster. A lot of girls refused to wear them.. we had to coax/threaten/plead to have them wear it. And they lost the confidence in their body language.

I repeat again, a formal attire is nothing but a spurced up version of what you wear in your daily life.

So Ayan, yes in the previous generation our grand-fathers wore Indian clothes to work and that was the normal then. This is the normal now. Maybe 20 years down the line there will be another normal.

And interesting footnote. I was in India for a project last year and had to go in to work in an Indian office for six months. Since my office wear now is all western I took some of that stuff along. But I think within a week I was back to wearing India clothes. I felt I stuck out like a sore thumb with the western attire and could be more accessible to my team if I was like one of them!

You just need to go into the Middle east to see bankers wearing their traditional garb, including their head dress and doing business in the billions. I have met many Tamizh business men wear Khadi shirts (neatly starched and ironed) with crisp white dhotis walk into a conference room. Mr. Chidambaram, our finance minister wears such attire.

For the Indian climate, cottons are ideal and healthier than the heavier materials that are required for sewing suits with. Just because the brits chose to wear those ridiculous clothes in the sweltering Indian heat, does not mean we need to continue that tradition, including the infernal tie! what works well in the english weather need not be the ideal one for India.

Even the tight denims that people "sport" worldwide today is funny, when you realize that the purpose of the original levi's was to pan for gold in the American river! It required a rugged material to handle grime and water and no washing!

Even more ridiculous is the way young people wear "jeans" the most hardy of materials and "hang out" in cafes and pubs! Of course, they are stone washed or "stressed" to show how "worked" they are!LOL! Modern clothing is quite amusing to observe!

Dee #18,
I agree Indian women look gorgeous in stockings.. I have come across some of them in the US. But in the Indian context they would look out of place, and may not feel comfortable wearing them for climatic as well as social reasons. Many women who feel comfortable wearing salwars/sarees to work would be put off if asked to wear even pantsuits, never mind skirts/stockings. So businesses here have to accomodate the sensibilites of the local culture (as blokes had pointed out).

SS, it is not about freedom, but the very opposite of it. You cannot impose a totally alien dress code on a local culture that is not used to it. Not every working women feels comfortable dressing up as a Kingfisher air hostess. And women who really want to dress up can do it. I don't think there is any rule that bans western formal wear (unless there is some kind of uniform that employees need to wear).

Blokes, I don't agree with you on denim. I find them very comfortable and durable. Certainly better than the polyester/terricot pants our previous generation used to wear, even in hot sweltering Chennai summers, for informal occasions.

Leduiz, I have nothing against women wearing ethnic clothes to work but it would be good to see the same courtesy extended to men working in private companies. And yes there are dress codes for women (like no chappals or sandals to work, casuals only on Friday) as well but when they flaunt the rules no one dares fine them in many companies.

Like Meenakshi said given the way Indian summers men wearing ethnic wear to work would be quite pleasant.


No where did SS and I say anything about forcing anyone to wear anything merely saying - the same ethnic wear choice should be granted to men folk as well.

And the reason why SS spoke about the Kingfisher flight attendants was just as an example that Indian women can look good in skirts and stockings even here in India. Its a woman's choice if she wants go to work in a business suit or salwar kameez given the nature of her job requirement and settings.

One tends to show more skin in a saree than a Western business suit.

As such skirts are not seen part of formal wear at workplaces - business suits are and most go well below the knee.

Ritu, btw in our school sports we marched in our regular school skirts. They aren't supposed to be tight but more like divided with ample space to run and jump around. Its basically a goose and gander thing that SS and I are talking about.

Ledzius- I agree too that denim is excellent 'cotton"- however, in the sweltering, humid heat of Chennai, better off worn loose, not tight!LOL! And in the rainy season, when you try to dry it, it "smells"! The dhoti and sari dries out neat and clean even in the worst of the monsoon and never smell, even if it is limp without the starch- these days Revive takes care of that small problem too.

I am all for "materials" that work well with the Indian weather that does not require the wearer to have to be in an Air conditioned atmosphere all the time wearing unhealthily tight and non-breathing fabrics. I can understand air hostesses wearing "tights" as they do work in an air conditioned/ pressurized cabin, not necessarily many other professions.

While going to college, I loved those wrap around skirts in Jaipur cotton prints that were so cool and comfortable just as the Orissa ikkats. Mangalagiri salwar kurtas and Lucknowi suits were perfect for any occasion. Ultra light Kotas, chanderis and maheshwaris kept us in a cloud of pastels, naturally cooling our systems. For jewel tones, Coimbatore cottons. Crisp cottons neatly pleated and pinned were de riguer while doing social work. My friends in med school had to wear saris too.

I do agree that the Men's department has fared poorly in the professional space. There is a huge comeback in Men's fashion in ethnic wear with heavily embroidered kurtas and sherwanis for special occasions. However, kurta, pyjamas do look extremely out of place in the work place as they seem like night wear. However, when I see photos of my great grandfather wearing his panchakacham under his "coat" to work in those sepia photos, I think they did look very regal and professional!

on a lighter note i think its good to see women wearing colorful clothes to work. men wearing same old shirts and suits get boring and monotonous. men at work probably are happy to see women put some color at the workplace.
infact even at formal parties you see men all wearing black colored suits but women wearing a variety of dresses. its pleasing to the eyes for men.

"Why don't women managers who consider themselves to be fair feminists take this matter up with their HR Department?"

Fair Feminists?
What the hell does that mean?

Is it a bunch of brainwashed hate mongering idiots with a sense of fairness?

There are feminists high up in Indian MNCs enforce 30% reservation for women twisting it from American "Diversity". In US, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and women constitute "Diversity".

In India, the Indian and western feminist bosses allocate that entire 30% quota for women only. Thats what fair feminism is all about.

Now, in some great MNCs, these 30% quota was implemented for promotions as well with the result that competency took a complete back seat.

Sexism is rampant in Indian corporates.

Some feminists declare, women should get preference in getting laptops so that they can work from home.

Some men ask managers, "will you implement diversity quota to year-end appraisals as well?"

Now, it is not at all a question of gender equality. It is all about compensating women for all imaginary social discrimination they faced for 10,000 years.

When people work from homes their salaries are naturally cut- rule applied by most private companies.

In private companies if the rule of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours is used it get noticed pretty soon and no I havent heard of women favoring each other just as I wouldnt say the for all men folk.



If you dont consider feminists to be fair that is your opinion which comes along with a ton load of excess baggage. I consider myself to be a fair feminist/ humanist and there are many other women on this board who consider themselves to be the same.

When people work from homes their salaries are naturally cut- rule applied by most private companies.

In private companies if the rule of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours is used it get noticed pretty soon and no I havent heard of women favoring each other just as I wouldnt say the for all men folk.



If you dont consider feminists to be fair that is your opinion which comes along with a ton load of excess baggage. I consider myself to be a fair feminist/ humanist and there are many other women on this board who consider themselves to be the same.