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Female assistants at Spain's Corte Ingles department store, a national institution, on Tuesday welcomed a sartorial switch after the company said their uniform would comprise trousers instead of skirts from next spring.
"Trousers will be imposed as part of the standard female uniform and in certain exceptional cases women will be able to carry on wearing skirts," a spokesman for the firm, omnipresent in Spanish cities, told AFP.
The change of uniform in Spain's oldest department store chain is a symbolic development in the country, whose Socialist government in June approved a bill to further male-female equality in the workplace.
For decades women, who constitute the majority of Corte Ingles assistants, have put up with a synthetic blouse and above-the-knee nylon skirt.
One assistant, Mayte, told AFP that the current kit "is like plastic. We suffocate in the summer and freeze in the winter."
Her verdict on the trousers?
"It's great news, it will be more practical."
The firm is seeking to bolster gender equality in its chain folowing a demand to that effect by the Spanish works inspectorate. The government bill approved in June aims to boost equality at work, including through positive discrimination.
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AFP 291834 GMT 08 06
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