In the case of Miss L Lawrence v Bundles of Joy Day Nursery, a nursery teacher has lost her sex discrimination claim after being accused of wearing a dress with too much cleavage. Latika Lawrence tried to sue her bosses but failed after an employment tribunal concluded that a male colleague with too many undone shirt buttons would have been similarly chastised.

Miss Lawrence, 28, took offence after her manager said her tight fitting dress left ‘too much breast on show’. The tribunal was told that staff at the Bundles of Joy daycare centre in Streatham, south London, were required to wear a ‘conservative’ uniform including a pink polo shirt, black trousers and flat shoes.

According to Lawrence, when she began work at the nursery there were no polo shirts available so she wore a stretchy black dress with a scooped neckline. The nursery would order polo shirts in batches as this was cheaper, and at this point did not have any in her size.

In judgment, Judge Dyal said: “The dress code itself was not discriminatory between men and women. The actual uniform was gender neutral and in our view the respondent would have applied the same standard to departures from the actual uniform (when employees wear their own clothes) whether dealing with a man or a woman. The standard was to dress conservatively and without exposing bodily flesh that would be inconsistent with conservative dress.”

The tribunal concluded that the matter would have been avoided had the employee been provided with the company uniform.