Amid record high temperatures in Sweden last month, temperatures inside un-air-conditioned cars on Stockholm commuter trains reached about 95° Fahrenheit (35° Celsius), and male train drivers sweltered in long pants. Their company dress code prohibited short pants, while female employees could wear skirts.
So about 15 of these drivers and other male employees did the (sort of) obvious: They wore skirts instead.
Lena Norrman, a Swedish language instructor at the University of Minnesota, calls this a typically Swedish protest, making light of a situation that might cause confrontation elsewhere. “The employees knew that this would make it into the press,” she says, “and all Swedes would agree that the employer did not think this through.”
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Sure enough, the transit company, Arriva, changed its dress code this week. “We have listened to these protests from our employees, and Monday morning we decided to offer shorts to all our employees in Sweden,” says Tomas Hedenius, spokesperson for Arriva. “I think they were pretty happy with the decision.” Arriva’s 4,400 employees operate over 1,100 trains, buses and trams in greater Stockholm.
Perhaps surprisingly, Hedenius says that Arriva was actually fine with skirts on dudes. Under Sweden’s famous ethos of gender equality, “If a man wants to wear a skirt, that’s OK,” he says. “If a woman wants to wear pants, that would be OK too, but that hasn’t happened.”
Gender equality aside, Norrman calls men in skirts “not at all” common in Sweden, although Hedenius speaks of male construction workers wearing utility kilts, which have pockets and straps for tools.
Since the Great Skirt Protest of 2013, temperatures have fallen, and Swedish media report that the male employees are no longer wearing skirts.
But they could.