This Canadian mayor took a sartorial stand against sexism in politics

We all know the drill: You slay a presentation at an important meeting and your blazer features higher than your brilliance in the clutch of compliments that come afterwards. "Oh, is that a new outfit?" "Red's a good colour on you." "I like what you did with your hair today."

It can go unspoken, but the double standard is clear — your male coworker doesn't get the same appraisal and it's a safer bet he'll be judged on substance over style. So it comes as a nice surprise to see a man quietly test that subtle sexism — and a bummer to see nobody actually clued in.

Richard Stewart, mayor of Coquitlam, B.C., wore the same "plain, off-the-rack, boring dark blue suit" to every council meeting for 15 months. Nobody noticed. The self-imposed social experiment was designed to see whether he'd be subject to anything close to the kinds of comments women get about their appearance at work on a semi-regular basis.

In a Facebook note posted Monday night, Stewart said he hatched the plan in November 2014 after reading about Australian newscaster Karl Stefanovic, who pulled the same experiment after noticing his female co-anchor regularly received critical feedback on her clothing. Stefanovic wore the same outfit for a year and nobody batted an eye.

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"We’ve heard other examples where high-profile women seem to be being judged on hair and outfit, while their male counterparts simply wear a suit — morning talk shows, political debates, even fundraising galas," Stewart wrote. "And we’ve heard sometimes very public (and even nasty) criticism of 'WHAT is she WEARING?', or 'She wore that same outfit a couple of weeks ago.'"

Stewart saw some of that reflected in his own local council chambers and as an MLA, heard worse from his female colleagues such as having to pack huge suitcases of clothes on legislative trips "lest they be caught wearing the same outfit twice," or women candidates fielding comments about their hair being "messy" if they'd been canvassing for votes all day in the rain.

His experiment only ended this past Monday when, as a committee meeting began, a councillor noticed the mayor was wearing a blue suit while three others were wearing grey. The councillor hadn't even observed that he'd been rocking the same suit for more than a year (save for the six or so times he had it dry-cleaned — "I didn’t want the first comment about my suit to be about the odour."), just that Stewart "didn't get the memo" about the grey uniform of the day.

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The experiment, Stewart hopes, will draw more attention to the ways politics can be more "gender-balanced" and inviting to women candidates. "Where this different standard presents a barrier, where this limits the advancement of one group over another, where this prevents our democratic institutions from better reflecting society, we need to remove it."

"Of course, I can’t imagine anybody suggesting that a woman could get away with wearing the same outfit for more than a year. But clearly a man could, and did," Stewart wrote.

I don't know, Mayor Stewart — could make for some pretty easy morning routines.