Dress code and appearance requirements for female flight attendants are discriminatory and lag a decade behind other nations, the Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union said yesterday, as it petitioned the National Human Rights Commission to set clear rules to prevent gender discrimination in the airline industry.
China Airlines, EVA Airways and Starlux Airlines all require female flight attendants to wear pencil skirts, and have rules on makeup and grooming, union executive director Lin Yu-chia (林昱嘉) said while delivering the petition to the commission in Taipei.
Attendants can wear pants during annual safety training, but must wear pencil skirts, high heels and stockings when on duty, which would hamper their ability to respond in an emergency, Lin said.
Photo: Lin Hui-chin, Taipei Times
Gender-neutral uniform options are the norm globally and should be mandated by the commission, she added.
Additionally, although most flight attendants at EVA and China Airlines are women, many return from maternity leave to find that their seniority or performance gains have restarted, they have difficulty getting promotions and some are assigned unreasonable shifts, Lin said.
This unfair treatment makes many flight attendants hesitant to apply for maternity leave, she said.
The reason Taiwanese airlines lag behind other nations in gender equality is because they look at their flight attendants as a product, EVA Air Union chairperson Lee Ying (李瀅) said, adding that the designer who redesigned China Airlines’ uniforms even said they should “be evocative.”
Although people are now paying more attention to gender equality in the workplace, regulations need to be enforceable to keep companies from circumventing them, she added.
The Executive Yuan likes to say that Taiwan leads Asia on gender equality, but its airlines lag far behind its international peers, union secretary-general Chou Sheng-kai (周聖凱) said.
A decade ago, in 2013, Asiana Airlines was the last airline in South Korea to still require its female flight attendants to wear skirts, Chou said.
That same year, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea declared the rule discriminatory, requiring the airline to provide gender-neutral options, he said.
Yet all of Taiwan’s major airlines still maintain this requirement, which is not only highly discriminatory, but runs counter to the spirit of the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, he added.
The Executive Yuan in 2014 determined a similar rule among police to be discriminatory, he said, calling on the commission to do the same for flight attendants.
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