–—- What Tokyo’s shorts-at-work debate would look like if it landed in Australia
Tokyo has a heat problem, a productivity problem, and now — apparently — a leg hair problem.
In an effort to keep office workers cool (and air-conditioning bills down), Tokyo’s metropolitan government has been encouraging men to wear shorts to work. The initiative has been met with enthusiasm from some, resigned tolerance from others, and from a vocal minority of women a complaint that has now entered the lexicon: ke-hara — “leg hair harassment.”
We came across this rather interesting article from BBC – Tokyo urges men to wear shorts to work, but women say it’s ‘leg hair harassment’ and thought we would give it a go: what would actually happen if this landed in Australia, having regard to Australian employment law and — just as importantly — Australian workplace culture?
The following is that exercise, conducted from an Australian lawyer’s perspective, with the appropriate degree of rigour and a slightly inappropriate degree of enjoyment.
We wish to be clear at the outset: Phoenix Law Team takes workplace harassment extraordinarily seriously. Our Workplace Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Policy runs to sixteen sections and contains no exemption for calves.
But we are also an Australian firm, and the temptation was irresistible. So: what if this happened here?
Part One: It Already Has, and Nobody Noticed
Australia’s response to “should men be permitted to wear shorts to work” is that we settled this in approximately 1976, in Queensland, and the answer was “yes, with long socks”.
The Queensland public servant in beige shorts, long socks pulled to the knee, and a short-sleeved business shirt is not a fashion choice. It is a load-bearing cultural institution. Attempting to legislate it away would trigger a constitutional crisis and, at minimum, a very stern letter from someone in Toowoomba.
Tokyo is having a debate. Brisbane is having a Tuesday.
Part Two: The Legal Analysis Nobody Asked For
Suppose a complaint of “leg hair harassment” were made in an Australian workplace. What actually happens?
The threshold test. Under Australian law, sexual harassment requires unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, in circumstances where a reasonable person would anticipate the possibility of offence, humiliation or intimidation. Our own policy puts it the same way.
Note the elements. Unwelcome: plausibly satisfied. Of a sexual nature: this is where the claim comes apart like a cheap thong strap on the second day of a beach holiday. Passive existence of a limb in ambient office air is not conduct of a sexual nature. It is thermodynamics.
The reasonable person. The reasonable person in Australian law is a useful legal fiction. In Queensland, the reasonable person owns a whipper-snipper and would not describe a colleague’s shin as harassment. In Melbourne, the reasonable person may hold different views but is also wearing a coat in February, so the question is moot.
Sex-based harassment. A more interesting angle. If the shorts policy applied only to men, and women were required to remain in full corporate armour in 38-degree heat, you would have a genuine conversation about differential treatment on the basis of sex — one that runs in precisely the opposite direction to the complaint as framed. The claim would not be “your legs offend me.” It would be “why do you get to be comfortable?”
That is a real issue. It is also, we note, not a leg hair issue.
The positive duty. Australian employers now carry a positive duty to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sexual harassment and hostile work environments. “Reasonable and proportionate” is doing enormous work in that sentence. A mandatory shaving policy would fail it. A functioning air conditioner would very likely satisfy it.
Part Three: The Australian Complaints That Would Actually Be Filed
Were this to unfold in an Australian office, we anticipate the following, in order of likelihood:
- The thongs escalation. Shorts are permitted. Someone arrives in thongs. Someone else arrives in board shorts, still slightly damp. Within a fortnight, someone from Sales is conducting a client call barefoot. Approximately none of this is a harassment matter. All of it is a WHS matter, because there is broken glass in the kitchen and nobody is wearing shoes.
- The air conditioning war. The genuine hostile work environment in Australian offices is not legs. It is the thermostat. It has always been the thermostat. Two-thirds of the floor is in a cardigan. The other third is visibly sweating. This conflict has claimed more workplace goodwill than any dress code in national history and would, in a just world, be the subject of its own Royal Commission.
- The client-facing carve-out. Someone drafts a policy stating shorts are acceptable “except when client-facing.” Nobody defines client-facing. The document dies in a Teams thread with fourteen comments and no resolution.
- The one genuine complaint. Buried under all of the above, a real one: a junior employee reports that a senior colleague made repeated remarks about her legs at a work drinks event. This has nothing to do with shorts, dress codes, or Tokyo. It is what our policy is actually for, and it is the reason the policy exists — not for the calves, but for what people say about them, and to whom, and from what position of power.
Part Four: The Serious Bit, Briefly
There is a real risk in stories like this one, and it is not sartorial.
Every time a marginal or frivolous-sounding complaint gets international coverage, it gives oxygen to the idea that harassment law is fundamentally silly — that it’s a machine for punishing people over hemlines and hurt feelings. That impression is corrosive. It makes people hesitate before reporting things that genuinely warrant reporting, because they don’t want to be the one who ended up in the news over a pair of shorts.
The legal test exists precisely to sort these categories. Conduct of a sexual nature. Reasonable person. Anticipated offence, humiliation or intimidation. These are not decorative. They are the filter that keeps a serious protective framework from collapsing into a general-purpose grievance mechanism — and, just as importantly, that keeps the serious complaints from being buried under the trivial ones.
Bare legs in July are not harassment. What someone chooses to say about them might be. The distinction matters, and it is not a fine one.
Our Position
“Phoenix Law Team supports shorts.”
We support them in summer, we support them in Queensland year-round, and we support the inalienable right of a person to have legs, unshaven, in an office, in the heat, without that fact being characterised as a legal wrong.
We reserve all rights in respect of thongs.
This article is general commentary and not legal advice. If your workplace is dealing with a genuine harassment matter, that is not a shorts problem and should not be treated as one — contact us, or your relevant human rights commission, work health and safety regulator, or the police as appropriate.
Phoenix Law & Associates — practical advice, defensible policy, and a firm view on socks.
CALL Phoenix Law & Associates +61731800908 | email – info@phoenix-law.com.au | Level 8, 320 Adelaide Street, Brisbane. #EmploymentLaw #brisbanelawyers #phoenixlawfirm
