Two years back, when Nicola Thorp reported to work as a temporary receptionist in the financial center here, she was shocked when her temp supervisor said her flat shoes were unacceptable. She would need to get herself shoes with heels at least two inches high or she will be going back home without pay.
When she refused, she was sent home from the accounting firm PwC without pay. But that was not the end of it. Five months later, Ms. Thorp, an actress originally from the northern seaside city of Blackpool, started a petition calling for a law that would make sure no company could ever again demand that a woman wear heels to work.
The petition garnered more than 150,000 signatures, helped spur a popular backlash and dozens of professional women posted photographs of themselves on Twitter defiantly wearing flats and prompted an inquiry overseen by two parliamentary committees.
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On Wednesday, more than two years after Ms. Thorp, now 28, strode into that office in her chic but sensible black flats, the committees released a report concluding that Portico, the outsourcing firm that had insisted she wear high heels, had broken the law. It added that existing law needed to be toughened to overcome outmoded and sexist workplace codes.
According to the report, discriminatory dress codes remain widespread. During the investigation, the committees received hundreds of complaints from women whose companies had different demands.
Ms. Thorp lauded the inquiry’s conclusion, saying it was all the more imperative in the Trump era, when men around the world had a role model in the White House who had boasted about behaving badly toward women.
“I refused to work for a company that expected women to wear makeup, heels and a skirt. This is unacceptable in 2017,” she said. “People say sexism is not an issue anymore. But when a man who has admitted publicly to sexually harassing women is the leader of the free world, it is more crucial than ever to have laws that protect women.”
Ms. Thorp’s heel revolt protest against sexism and discrimination, was also a matter of public health given the toll that high heels take on women’s feet. Portico on Wednesday said it had rewritten its code almost immediately after the issue was raised by Ms. Thorp, dropping the heel requirement, among others.
However, PwC stressed that the dress code required by Portico in December 2015 was Portico’s policy and had been enforced by a Portico supervisor. The inquiry was instigated by an incident at its offices, and it remained committed to equality at the workplace.
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