A Queensland school did not discriminate against a female student by forcing her to wear a skirt on formal occasions, a tribunal has found.
The student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, made the complaint to the state’s Human Rights Commissioner, arguing she suffered discrimination by the new uniform policy which requires female students between years 7 and 12 to wear a skirt on formal occasions including outings, ceremonies, events and photographs.
Females are allowed to wear shorts and pants on other days, while male students wear them every day.
The father of the student argued in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal that his daughter suffered a greater financial burden because she had to buy two school uniforms and that greater care was needed to maintain her modesty in a skirt compared with male students.
The initial complaint also said she had suffered negative psychological effects from “negative gender stereotypes and gendered power relations” but this was not raised at the hearing.
“If the complainant failed to comply with the formal occasion skirt requirement she could face negative consequences of exclusion or suspension or other lesser consequences not faced by a male student,” the decision read.
In a statement the student said when wearing a skirt, “there is an extra level of thinking required about the way I move and sit, as to not expose myself”.
Her father said she had experienced “stress and anxiety” about having to wear a skirt with a large number of people around.
After the complaint was first raised with the school, the student was told she could apply for a formal exemption, but the student argued this was also discriminatory because male students did not need to.
Lawyers for the school argued that there had been no concerns expressed by other parents about any extra expense and they had skirts available on loan. They said the skirts are long enough to touch the ground when kneeling, so there is a low risk of exposure and female students were allowed to wear bike shorts, which would remove the modesty issue.
QCAT member Jeremy Gordon said the school had shown that other schoolgirls were happy to wear skirts.
“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,” he wrote.
He found that the policy did not discriminate against the student.
“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.”
