According to research from the Paris-Sorbonne University, women who wear low-cut tops in job application photographs are up to five times more likely to receive an interview offer than those who wear round-neck clothing.

The research saw two women with near-identical CVs each apply for 100 sales roles and 100 accountancy roles, with half of the applications for each role including photographs with round-neck tops and half low-cut. Among the 200 combined sales roles applications, the low-cut submissions received 62 more interview offers than their round-neck counterparts, and in the accountancy applications they received 68 more interview offers. Dr Sevag Kertechian, who carried out the research, said: “The results were quite shocking and negative, but not necessarily surprising – they show we need to conduct more research.”

The findings come hot on the heels of the recent furore over the case of Nicola Thorp, an office worker who was sent home without pay for refusing to wear high heels.

Quite apart from the fact that women shouldn’t feel pressured to wear high heels or low-cut tops at work if they don’t feel comfortable, it wouldn’t necessarily even help their careers if they did. It’s only a few years since a study revealed that bosses considered low-cut tops one of the “biggest mistakes a female employee can make”, and that one in five managers had fired someone for “inappropriate dress”. The survey of 3,000 managers and workers found that almost half of bosses had also overlooked someone for a promotion or pay rise for the same reason.

This isn’t merely a matter of looking smart in the workplace – it indicates that society has very different ideas of what “smart” looks like when it comes to men and women. If there is a threat of being fired for “inappropriate dress”, then it matters that there are many more ways in which women might be considered to be dressed “inappropriately” than men.

The dramatically different surveys have one thing in common: they both suggest that a woman’s workplace performance may be judged on her appearance, and specifically on how sexual or attractive that appearance is considered to be. These are standards by which men are not being measured. “Smartness” for men tends to be gauged by a simple, objective set of criteria, and is generally considered less important than workplace performance and capability. (Though for men of colour, latent racism inherent in those standards can have a negative impact.) But for women, office dress requirements and surveys such as these create a carnival of complex hoops to jump through, with the rules seeming to change constantly and no easy way to win.

The advice women are given about cleavage in the workplace is conflicting and unhelpful. Some are inappropriately pressured to reveal more to “keep clients happy”, while others are reprimanded and told to cover up because it is “unprofessional”.

In short, women in the workplace often find themselves trying to walk a fine line between madeup but not overdone, smart but not prudish, stylish but not flamboyant, neat but not uptight. Suddenly, clothing becomes more than just what you wear to work, it is who you are, and how good you are at your job. This isn’t happening to men.

It is because of double standards such as these that I give a particularly hollow laugh when confronted with men who argue that women “use their sexuality” in the workplace, or scoop undeserved promotions by dressing provocatively. In reality, women are much more likely to be lambasted for getting it wrong, regardless of whether they show cleavage or not. Not to mention the fact that having breasts in the workplace is far more likely to attract sexual harassment than promotions.

For many large-breasted women, finding smart, well-fitting office clothes that reveal no cleavage at all can be a real challenge. But why should they pay the price of somebody else’s perception about what that small patch of flesh signifies?

As far as the survey results go, there is certainly a strong argument for preventing this particular form of prejudice by doing away with job application photographs altogether, as many employers have done. What possible argument can there be for needing to see a picture of an applicant alongside their CV that doesn’t veer into dangerously discriminatory territory?

Suggestions of what women should and shouldn’t wear in the workplace may seem harmless on the surface, but in reality they risk compounding the normalised judgment of women on the basis of appearance instead of performance. Unless a woman is turning up to the office in a bikini or a snowsuit, we should be focusing on her work, not what she’s wearing.