How Dress Affects Respect for Women in the Workplace

First Impressions

Do suits help with confidence?
ECG, a firm that specializes in communication and image, has a web page called Dress Speak for Women. According to its statistics, perceptions about a woman's confidence, intelligence, and authority are developed within 5 to 30 seconds of meeting her. First impressions matter and, in ECG's words, "clothes talk."

Advancements come to those who dress the part
According to Hilka Klinkenberg, author of the book, "At Ease Professionally: An Etiquette Guide for the Business Arena," not only is the first impression important, but a woman's looks and body language account for fully 58 percent of her appeal. To get advancement opportunities and, better still, be taken seriously, women need to dress the part.

A little too much cleavage for the office
One of the most egregious mistakes that women make in business clothing is dressing too sexy. Ginger Burr, president of Total Image Consultants, has said in her talks and in her book, "Who Taught You to Dress?" that women who display cleavage are distracting other workers.

You have to ask yourself if it's too sexy
Others agree. Peter Glick, a psychology professor at Lawrence University, states that, "dressing too sexy has psychological effects on your peers." Glick conducted a study published in the Psychology of Women Quarterly that provided evidence to the fact that sexy attire put women into the "less competent" category, no matter how smart they actually were.

Keep the shiny skin-tight leather for club-hopping
With the advent of layoffs, business specialist and human resources manager, Darla Smith, owner of the Frugal Fashionista and a Santa Barbara style consultant, says that, "A lot of my clients have been trying to improve their wardrobes to keep their jobs." Smith says, "They know there have been layoffs and cutbacks so they are dressing up for work," especially in those public communications positions that put them up front and where apparel is most important. "They're tired of under-dressing for work," she says.

Fashion affects the corporate climb
An informal study collected by the site, theragtrader.com, polled 3,000 workers. Results confirmed for them what the majority of women know: that the way they dress affects their workday, and that "dressing up" made that day a better performance day for them as well. A spokesperson for the site believes that the way you feel about how you look also affects your climb up the career ladder. Fully two-thirds of the women in the study felt that being smartly dressed gained them respect from colleagues.

A study resulting in different opinions was conducted in a rural Midwestern hospital. The researchers wondered if the way a person dresses affects her job performance. The subjects worked in a transcription department. On some days they dressed casually and other days wore more formal attire. The results of this investigation indicated that the way a person dresses does not affect job performance. But in all things being equal, this is a department that is doing data work---fairly self-contained---and employees did not interact with the public or higher management.

What are the others wearing?
Another study supports the Dress for Success program, a nonprofit organization that supplies clothing and fashion advice to disadvantaged women. It has many success stories across the country, but its goal is to help women foster a career. The study, using MBA students, found women have more obstacles to overcome with business dress than men and, in particular, that they "face a double standard in corporate offices that have adopted business-casual days: women who participate in casual dress days may be unfairly stereotyped and evaluated as less hard-working and professional than their male co-workers."