A piece of apparel intended for discipline and order may end up acting as a silent barrier to children’s health, which is somewhat ironic. A recent study from the University of Cambridge, which examined how almost 1.1 million young people in 135 countries go about their daily lives, has that unsettling suggestion at its core. Fewer children meet the World Health Organization’s recommended daily activity level in areas where the majority of schools mandate uniforms. There is a gap, but it’s not very big. It’s also broader for girls.
The research’s leader, Dr. Mairead Ryan, takes care to avoid going too far. The study itself states that causation cannot be deduced from the numbers alone, and she is not advocating for the elimination of uniforms. Nevertheless, it is difficult to ignore the patterns. Approximately 16% of students in nations where uniforms are common meet the WHO’s daily exercise target. That percentage rises to 19.5% in areas where uniforms are less common. A slight increase, to be sure, but when the numbers are spread over more than a million children, they cease to seem like noise.
As the results emerged, the information regarding elementary school students caught my attention. Younger children typically accumulate exercise in the same way that they have always done: by running, climbing, and engaging in the kind of carefree physical play that older students typically abandon. In nations where uniforms are required, the gender difference in physical activity at that age increases significantly, from 5.5 to 9.8 percentage points. The fact that older students did not exhibit the same pattern begs the question of what is lost and when.
Something as basic as a hem might hold the key to the explanation. According to earlier studies, girls who wear dresses or skirts frequently feel less at ease performing common physical activities that children engage in, such as cartwheels, hanging upside down, and scurrying over playground equipment. The study’s senior author, Dr. Esther van Sluijs, put it bluntly: girls’ perceptions of what they can accomplish in particular clothing are shaped by social norms and expectations. Additionally, those standards are ingrained early on.
Reading the research gives me the impression that uniforms as design choices are more important than uniforms as clothing. Girls’ PE kits discouraged participation in specific activities, according to a 2021 study conducted in England. Tess Howard, an England hockey player, has advocated for the redesign of gendered sports uniforms based on her own interviews. The scope of the data that finally supports the suspicion is new, but none of this is new.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the majority of kids don’t get their daily exercise from physical education classes. It originates from the unplanned bike ride home, the lunchtime kickabout, and the walk to school. Over time, anything that gently encourages children to sit still instead of moving adds up. Additionally, clothing lies at the nexus of comfort, identity, and habit, no matter how invisible it becomes once you get used to wearing it.
The truly intriguing question is what comes next. The Cambridge team contends that there is now sufficient data to look into whether the relationship is causal rather than merely correlational. They recommend that school communities give uniform design more thought, considering whether what children wear genuinely encourages or subtly restricts movement. Compared to large-scale public health campaigns, it’s a minor intervention, but perhaps that’s the point. The most difficult issues can occasionally be found in the most commonplace locations.
