Frances Whiting: Good riddance to the sexist school skirt

Finally our state schools have seen sense and will introduce a gender neutral uniform policy allowing anyone — girls or boys — to wear pants. This should have happened decades ago, writes Frances Whiting.

Among my pocketful of memories from primary school: being forced to drink warm, sour milk from a triangular shaped carton in the mornings; the Great Water Fight of 1979; fat crème buns, and the Day of the Dog Catcher.

On that particular day, a man in dark overalls with a chipped front tooth chased a stray dog all over the school grounds, determined to catch it, only to be thwarted by hundreds of students equally determined he would not.

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It was us and the dog against the man with the stick, and it was one of the best lunchtimes of my life.

But the day that shimmers in my memory, like a long ago folk tale, was the day that girls were allowed on the school oval.

It was a turning point when girls were permitted to play on the school oval. Picture: iStock

For decades, girls had not been allowed to step foot on this hallowed ground at lunchtime.

It was deemed a boys’ place, a place of football and cricket, of Red Rover and rough-housing, and it was not for the likes of us.

But one morning, the public address system crackled with the news that things were about to change. Girls would soon be welcome to play on the oval, and all hell broke loose. Temporarily.

The girls were ecstatic, but the boys were — at first — unhappy, and a few parents wrote strongly worded letters.

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But common sense prevailed, and so on to the oval we excitedly cartwheeled with our skirts tucked into our pants.

The sky didn’t fall in, the boys eventually accepted our presence, asked us to join their games, and those who didn’t grew up to become members of Tattersalls. Or at least the ones who recently held out to the last about women joining their ranks.

I thought about my old school oval recently when I read Education Minister Grace Grace’s announcement about who gets to wear the pants in Queensland’s State Schools from next year. The answer? Everybody.

Currently about 40 per cent of Queensland’s State Schools have a uniform policy that only allows female students to wear skirts or dresses.

But from next year, the Department of Education’s updated Student Dress Code will require all State Schools to offer shorts and long pants to its female students. It will be their choice, as it should have been all along.

There were no gender-neutral uniforms at Brisbane’s Stafford State School in 1960. Picture: Supplied

There is probably not one female reading this who has not, at some stage during her school years, tucked her skirt into her pants before attempting a hand stand, or sat uncomfortably on the floor pulling it down around her thighs, desperately hoping her knickers aren’t showing.

It seems ludicrous to me that this policy hasn’t been in place for decades — and that some Australian private schools are reportedly still holding out and holding on to outdated and impractical “skirts and dresses only” uniform policies.

Their reasoning, as it so often is, is that “it’s tradition”.

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It was the same reason given for not allowing women into the aforementioned Tatts. Or to the public bar at the Regatta. Or on to the school oval. All tradition.

All such tiny, inconsequential rules that nevertheless all add up to the same, big message: You are not in control.

Of where you go. Of what you wear. Of what you can and cannot do. And it has ever been thus. So too is what will happen next.

The new uniform policy will be adopted. Some girls will choose to wear the pants and some will not. A few parents will write strongly worded letters, and things will eventually settle down.

Private schools, such as Brisbane’s Sommerville House, prioritise dresses as a tradition. Picture: Sarah Marshall/News Corp Australia

The sky will not fall in and there will come a day when people will scratch their heads about a time when girls were only allowed to wear dresses and skirts to school.

Just as it now seems unfathomable that girls were once not allowed on a school oval.

This policy is long overdue. I hope all schools eventually take it up, so that our girls can go play and jump and run and kick, without worrying about any part of their body whatsoever.

And in an age when the real worry — the really big worry — is kids not playing outside at all, any measure that encourages both girls and boys to put down their phones and know the joy that is swinging wildly from a monkey bar is a good one.

Frances Whiting is an author, columnist and journalist with The Courier-Mail and The Sunday Mail.

@franceswhiting