In New York, a female banker is taking her former employers to court over sacking her because she was ‘too attractive’.  Debrahlee Lorenzana is claiming that Citibank fired her because her pencil skirts and fitted suits were distracting male colleagues from their work.

According to her complaint, she was ordered not to wear high heels because they drew attention to her figure and stopped men from working, but female colleagues who wore similar clothes were not told to change their appearance because, according to Ms Lorenzana, they were less attractive than her. She was also given a list of the clothes her employer wanted her to stop wearing to the office – she was asked by her employer not to wear: turtleneck tops, pencil skirts, fitted business suits, or other properly tailored clothing and that she shouldn’t wear high heels either.

So what’s the law? Well it varies from country to country, but it is discriminatory to insist that people dress in a fashion that is different to their colleagues, so if everybody else is wearing casual clothing, you can’t insist one person dresses formally if they are doing the same job. On the other hand, work-specific clothing can be insisted on, particularly if people do jobs that have health or safety implications: catering staff must dress in a way that guarantees hygiene so aprons and hats are not just required but legally stipulated, and builders and other construction workers need to have safety clothing that protects them, and the public, from harm.

The Crisis charity’s 2008 Reverse Graffiti campaign has become one of the benchmarks for city-based charities.

•    The aim – Crisis wanted to highlight the fact that although where were now fewer people now living on the streets of major British cities, sizeable hidden homeless population of thousands were leading ‘invisible lives’ in hostels and temporary accommodation that didn’t address their needs to a stable home, training and a chance to find permanent employment.
•   The process – rather than using paint or spray cans, water was used through a sprayer to clear dirt from city walls through a stencil in the shape of a homeless person in shapeless clothing huddled against a wall. The shape was actually made up of the words ‘most homeless people have moved on but their problems haven’t gone away’ and included the charity’s website address. 15 teams dressed in Crisis branded clothing worked through a single night across London to create ‘reverse’ graffiti that was seen by thousands of commuters on their way to work the next morning. Because the graffiti is actually clean wall, rather than dirty, it’s not classed as vandalism or damage to property.
•    The outcome – the campaign, which Crisis featured on its Facebook page, resulted in 50 PR follow-ups, more than 120,000 visits to the Crisis website and 60 new regular donors being recruited.

It’s a lot easier to delegate at work than at home – for one thing, in the workplace, everybody has a job description, so that might be the place to start!

Writing a simple job description for everybody in the house can be fun and informative – what can the youngest family member do: plump up the cushions? Be responsible for handing the remote to Dad? Line up the shoes in the hall? Even small and unimportant tasks teach children how to follow instructions and give them a sense of responsibility.

In one household there are rotating jobs: one week Mum loads the dishwasher, next week Dad, third week the oldest child, fourth week the youngest. Many other tasks are passed around too, which is a good idea as it stops people getting fed up with doing the same chore. In this family there are also specific clothes for each job – the dishwasher person has a special apron, the person in charge of sorting out the recycling has a big specially printed T-shirt with RECYLER printed on it, and sturdy garden gloves to keep their hands clean and so on – this gives a value to each job and reminds people that everybody contributes to running the household.

Just as everybody in a house produces  dirty dishes, dirty clothe and mess, so, in the workplace, everybody contributes to the need for housekeeping and cleaning. Making sure that every week one member of the team is responsible for washing cups and buying milk, or sorting out scrap paper so that it can be re-used on the blank side, is also good for morale as it lets employees know that you value the environment at large and their working conditions in particular.

Working together can also be important. For a family this can be one hour at the weekend before anybody is allowed to leave the house, when the lawn is mowed, shoes are polished, bills are paid etc. In the workplace this can be a great way to improve your surroundings. What about asking the team to give up one lunchtime a week to work on a community project such as planting a flowerbed or window boxes, or even growing salad vegetables in the office – you can also clean the pavement outside your building etc. Sounds a bit goody goody perhaps, but nearly everybody who does community work says they feel happier afterwards! You need to ensure proper clothing is worn for this kind of task though: overalls or sturdy jeans and specially provided T-shirts or other casual wear that can get grimy and be washed easily.