“I’m not flight attendant Barbie!”

“I’m not flight attendant Barbie!” María Fernández has said enough. This Iberia worker rebelled against heels, still mandatory for part of her working day. “Don’t force us to wear heels. Let us live!” she cried out on Women’s Day asking her company to abolish the “sexist” obligation. Her demand adds almost 60,000 signatures on the Change.org platform.

Fernández has been with the company for more than three decades and has worn some of the uniforms designed by designers such as Pertegaz, Elio Berhanyer, Adolfo Domínguez or Teresa Helbig. When he expected dress regulations to be relaxed by allowing flight attendants to wear flat shoes, he was outraged. Those that he would like far away, are still nearby heels.

«They boasted of being modern when presenting the new uniforms. They showed that we cabin crew could finally wear flat shoes or slippers. But they did not say that it would only be from takeoff to landing. Not during passenger greetings, baggage checks, or boarding. And what is worse: on the very long roads on which we travel kilometers in airports… Not there. There we will continue to be forced to wear heels », she complains.

Photo posted by María Fernández on the change platform. org. /

CR

He is turned on by the difference between the female and male uniform, with flat shoes. “Seriously, the men will walk around in loafers while we women will have to tear our feet apart?” she wonders. She shows court shoes with two-inch rises, “as low as they’ll let us wear on land.” The second option is “significantly higher heels,” she says.

He trusts that his complaint will change the criteria of those responsible for the airline, whose initial response does not satisfy those affected: «we work with the representatives of the workers and the labor prevention service in the uniform guide where all these details will be defined ».

“Enough of sexism. We are in 2022. Only by spreading this inequality will we be in time to avoid it, ”says Fernández, who asks the company to rectify before June 1, when the new regulations will come into force.

“It is useless to congratulate your employees on March 8 while they implement regulations that discriminate against us for being women,” she hurts. He recalls that the Supreme Court has already ruled that forcing female workers to wear uniforms different from those of men of the same category and activity “lacks objective justification and is contrary to the principle of non-discrimination based on sex.”

Her rebellion against heels follows in the footsteps of #KuToo, the Japanese feminist movement to free women from heels at work. Promoted by the writer, model and actress Yumi Ishikawa, he got Japan Airlines to eliminate the use of high heels and skirts that it imposed on its 6,000 workers, including stewardesses. #KuToo, which plays with the Japanese words ‘kutsu’ (shoe) and ‘kutsuu’ (pain), asks that companies not be able to require their workers to wear heels or uncomfortable clothing during their working day, something common in nothing egalitarian Japanese society.