Women are still not allowed to wear what they want in the office. Sorry, what?

It’s not like there’s anything else we need to be doing at work, right?

It’s not like there’s anything else we need to be doing at work, right?

Anyone else getting tired of being told how to dress, more often than not, by men? Just last week, female golfers were told to cover up to keep the focus on the game, while The University of Brussels came under fire for asking women to wear a ‘nice revealing neckline’.

And now new research has revealed that women are still being cautioned at worked for wearing clothes that are ‘a distraction to male colleagues’ - you know, just in case the whole gender pay gap thing wasn’t enough of an office challenge.

The study of 2,000 women, conducted by VoucherCodesPro, found that 35% have been cautioned over the length of their skirt, 30% for wearing ‘revealing’ clothing, 18% for wearing slogan t-shirts and a further 15% for ‘outfit flamboyance’.

And it’s not just the clothes we wear that’s an issue, because a further 46% of complaints were made about our make-up too. In case you need us to decode this for you, it basically means we can’t win.

Naturally, most women didn’t feel great about this, with most of them saying they felt ‘embarrassed’, ‘angry’ and ‘singled out’ at being called out for their appearance.

It probably won’t come as a shock either that only 9% of men have been cautioned for the way they look at work. And how do men react when they get told off? 72% of male respondents said they simply ‘shrugged it off’.

George Charles, spokesperson for VoucherCodesPro, told Metro.co.uk, ’It’s okay to pull up a member of your staff on their appearance if you genuinely believe that they’re breaking their contract in anyway, or even if it poses some sort of health & safety risk.’

He continued, ’But employers can’t just tell women to change their appearance because they’re possibly going to be distracting to their male colleagues. That’s outrageous.’

Hear hear.

Penny Goldstone

Penny Goldstone is the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire, covering everything from catwalk trends to royal fashion and the latest high street and Instagram must-haves.

Penny grew up in France and studied languages and law at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris before moving to the UK for her MA in multimedia journalism at Bournemouth University. She moved to the UK permanently and has never looked back (though she does go back regularly to stock up on cheese and wine).

Although she's always loved fashion - she used to create scrapbooks of her favourite trends and looks, including Sienna Miller and Kate Moss' boho phase - her first job was at MoneySavingExpert.com, sourcing the best deals for everything from restaurants to designer sales.

However she quit after two years to follow her true passion, fashion journalism, and after many years of internships and freelance stints at magazines including Red, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Good Housekeeping, landed her dream job as the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire UK.

Her favourite part of the job is discovering new brands and meeting designers, and travelling the world to attend events and fashion shows. Seeing her first Chanel runway IRL at Paris Fashion Week was a true pinch-me moment.