Rules which lay down standards of dress and appearance for both women and men are unlikely to constitute unlawful discrimination on grounds of sex, even if they impose different requirements on women (such as prohibition on wearing trousers) than on men, based on the difference in sexes. This is the principle which emerges from the recent EAT case of Schmidt v Austicks Bookshops.
In the same way that the EAT's interpretations resuscitated the Equal Pay Act, recent decisions would now appear to be giving the Sex Discrimination Act a new lease of life. In Price v The Civil Service Commission and Steel v The Post Office, the EAT takes the same broad, commonsense approach to the indirect discrimination provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act that it has to the like work provisions of the Equal Pay Act.