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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, you could also make the case that buying "women's" jackets for the women on the team is sexist, as it does involve treating them differently on the basis of sex. The only non-sexist way to give out these jackets is to ask people which 'sex' of jacket they want, along with their size.

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Interestingly, you decided to frame this as "treating [the women] differently on the basis of sex". Why not "treating [the men] differently on the basis of sex"?

That's a good point, and I suppose that I did so because the blog post focused on the impact on the women of the team. It is also possible that I have some subconscious bias, and framed it as a 'women's issue' because of that, but I cannot be certain.

Women have objectively measurable differences in body measurements from men. This requires that garments for women be constructed differently than garments for men, in exactly the same way that a garment for a bear-shaped man must be constructed differently than a similar garment for a scarecrow-shaped man.

In principle, the opportunity for unfair discrimination is the same as if the company got a discount for their S, M, L, and XL jackets, but did not get a discount for the XS jackets, and actually had to pay extra for the XXL and XXLT jackets.

By offering males their choice of sizes, even if it was just between L or XL, Uber already obviated that argument. If you give garments to all your employees, you really need to have a lot of checkboxes:

  [_] XS  [_] XL    [_] 0  [_] 8-10   [_] Other:
  [_] S   [_] XLT   [_] 2  [_] 12-14      Chest ____    Neck ____  Torso ____
  [_] M   [_] XXL   [_] 4  [_] 16-18      Waist ____  Sleeve ____
  [_] L   [_] XXLT  [_] 6  [_] 20-22       Hips ____    Cuff ____

There, everyone's covered.

There's nothing inherently female about size 8-10, or inherently male about size XL. They are simply different sizes. Statistically, those sizes were standardized to fit the greatest number of potential buyers with the fewest variations in pattern parameters. There is a great set of US Army recruit measurement data out there if you wanted to try to design different size categories (for non-obese individuals, due to the inherent military bias), but I think you would have a difficult time doing so.

Totally. So, next time the whole team with 6% of women in it will get female t-shirts. To be even more equal, they will be all designed to hold breasts size D.

Otherwise said, guys went to fitting and got just right size of jacket. Nothing sexist about buying women just right size of jacket too.

Unless you're buying "one-size-fits-all" jackets, "gender" is usually included in "size". "Men's size 30" is different than "women's size 30".

Most garment companies have differing 'styles' depending on gender, as they use different 'patterns' (shapes) for cutting the materials.

Thank you for that very informative comment. So that's why those sweaters I bought in the women's section at Uniqlo don't seem to fit me very well!

Still, you could ask employees to specify cut+size instead of just size (inferring cut from their gender). So I'd put down "men's small" or whatever.

I think if you were being obsessively "fair" then yes you would have to do that (personally, I don't really want a leather jacket its not my thing .. but I could choose one for my SO or my sister or my dad or something)

Guys, all went to fittings. Jackets were right size for whoever was wearing. Fat guys did not got thin guy jackets and thin guys did not got maxi-XXL jackets.

No, you absolutely can not.

Why not? I've known women who wear male, or male-ish clothes. I've not known men who wear women's clothes, but I know they're around. And there's gender identity, which we as a country are currently struggling over.

Wouldn't it be most equitable to just ask which sex clothes you want?

Yeah obviously, but I don't think the blog post was really suggesting otherwise. Of course if a man wants a women's jacket or vice versa than they can have it. But from a logistical point of view it's safe to assume that most of the men will want a men's cut and most of the women will want a women's cut.

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