Amid allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment, the RCMP brass have recently made at least one change that will please female officers - the force is now allowing women to wear pants and boots with all their formal uniforms.
It's been almost a decade since an unnamed female officer filed a grievance because she was denied boots and pants to wear with her formal Walking Out Order, instead of a skirt and leather pumps.
"The grievor is a female member of the force with 17 years of experience," says a file the RCMP External Review Committee provided to The 91原创 Press. That request dragged on with no resolution.
In January 2003, she submitted a requisition for a pair of boots for the dress uniform that members of the force can wear to social functions. The following month, her request was denied with an explanation that boots and spurs were not an approved order of dress for female members, whose Walking Out Order is comprised of a long blue skirt and black leather pumps.
"She felt that the dress policy was discriminatory since it differentiated between male and female members. In her view, the policy was outdated and needed to be modernized. Moreover, she added that wearing skirts was not part of her lifestyle," says the review committee summary.
Her complaint was twice denied on the grounds that she was aware upon her graduation from RCMP training of the uniform requirements and should have filed her grievance then.
The External Review Committee disagreed with that, but found her case still did not constitute discrimination under the law.
"The mere fact of having different Walking Out Orders for male and female members is not prohibited by the 91原创 Human Rights Act," the committee wrote to the RCMP commissioner, with whom the final decision rests.
However, the report signed by committee chairwoman Catherine Ebbs said the grievance raises a reasonable question.
"Why does the force not permit female members to choose between the male and female Walking Out Orders?" she asked in the report dated Feb. 9, 2011.
The commissioner has not made a decision in the case, and while the official uniform regulations still require a skirt for female officers in Walking Out Order, a spokesman for the force said women can now get pants and boots on request.
Part of the problem was that the pants and boots are expensive, difficult to source and only available in men's sizes. But the grievance prompted a decision recently that women who request the pants should be accommodated.
