Girls just want to wear pants

The winter uniform was marginally better because the cold weather afforded us a degree of comfort. We still had to wear jumpers to cover 'the gape' in the button down beige shirt, which made us all look like we had jaundice and restricted our movements, but girls with older sisters had it worse. Understandably to save money their parents made them wear their older sister's heavy wool tunics, which hobbled any activity.

The rest of us 'got away' with a flared brown shirt that sat fetchingly on our stomachs, and clung to the thick wool tights that complemented the look. As our parents reminded us, they were paying school fees, so the inevitable tears and snags on the tights had to be stitched up like a scar on Frankenstein's creature. Younger girls were cautioned against imaginative play in the school gardens lest they snag their hose.

The fact is that at the girls' school I attended, the uniform in turn infantilized and sexualized us all, and at the end of our last exams, many of us felt compelled to burn the beastly garments which had caused us so much suffering over six long years. I would like to find the people on the School Board and force them to wear that bloody uniform. Did they think it made us more 'ladylike'? Did they not give a damn?

Despite my experience, I am a strong supporter of school uniforms. Get it right, as they do for boys, and it really is a wonderful democratic form of dress for students. As a working mother, it is one less thing to think about.

As the mother of sons, I have not had a reprise of the misery I suffered for someone else's vision of what girls should look like.

A school uniform shouldn't inflict misery on one gender, which is exactly what archaic girls' uniforms do. Let's be honest, a dress is a fashion statement, nothing more, and while I admit to being very partial to a fetching dress and high heels in the workplace, I am doing nothing more physically stressful than sitting at a desk, or going to meetings.

As an art student, I wore clothes that were comfortable and practical for the painting studio and in the jewelry workshop, and in my years as a freelance writer and stay at home mum of two young children, I wore jeans and anything else that could be thrown into the wash after being covered with all manner of bodily fluids.

Clothing should be appropriate, and at school, girls should be afforded the same comfort and practicality in clothing as boys. Indeed, all children should have the right to be comfortable, and warm, and cool, and able to move without feeling awkward about their bodies or revealing too much flesh because of ridiculously cut outfits.

Anyone who objects to gender neutral uniforms should be forced to wear a school girl's dress for a week and try and do what we expect girls to do in that unsuitable attire. It is said that Ginger Rogers could do exactly what Fred Astaire did, but while dancing backwards with high heels on. Let's not make education a similar exercise for girls because of what we expect them to wear.