Skirts were permitted.
So they chose skirts.
In a later English-language report, Åkersten acknowledged that passengers sometimes stared when they saw a male train driver walking along a platform in a uniform skirt.
But he did not appear particularly bothered.
He said people might look at him strangely, but he was comfortable with himself.
The reaction from passengers was reportedly largely positive.
Associated Press coverage at the time, republished by CityNews, reported that Åkersten said customers had responded positively to the unusual uniform choice.
Why Arriva Could Not Simply Ban the Skirts
Once male employees began wearing skirts, the company faced a difficult situation.
Management could hardly tell male employees that skirts were permitted for female workers but forbidden for male workers.
Arriva itself recognized the problem.
Company spokesman Tomas Hedenius said the railway operator would not stop the men from wearing skirts because doing so could amount to discrimination.
“To say anything else would be discrimination,” he told media covering the story.
So the workers had found a remarkably effective position.
They were expressing dissatisfaction with the shorts ban while simultaneously remaining within the company’s own regulations.
There was no need to walk off the job.
There was no need to refuse assignments.
There was no need to wear unauthorized clothing.
The employees simply chose one of the uniform options provided to them.
That is why the episode has often been remembered as a classic example of malicious compliance or weaponized compliance — obeying a rule literally in a way that exposes how impractical or inconsistent the rule may be.
The term is modern internet shorthand, but the idea is much older.
Rules often depend on people following not only their wording but also their intended social conventions.
In this case, Arriva’s uniform rules apparently assumed that female workers would choose skirts and male workers would choose trousers.
The policy did not explicitly need to say so because that expectation was considered obvious.
The drivers challenged that assumption simply by selecting another approved option.
And suddenly the distinction between “professional” skirts and “unprofessional” shorts became much more difficult to defend.
Thirteen Men and a Story the World Could Not Ignore
The story might have remained a small labor dispute within Stockholm public transportation.
Instead, it went viral by the standards of 2013.
Swedish outlets reported on it first.
Then international media picked it up.
Sky News in Britain reported that a group of Swedish railway workers were wearing skirts to get around the shorts ban.
The Independent described how 13 employees had abandoned long trousers in favor of skirts because temperatures in the cab could reach approximately 35°C.
The Associated Press distributed the story internationally, describing male drivers and conductors on the Roslagsbanan line arriving for work in skirts as a protest against the company’s uniform policy.
Coverage spread so far that Arriva’s Swedish communications manager later told Sveriges Radio that he had even received an email from a soldier in Afghanistan who had heard about the controversy.
“It’s been all over the news,” he said.
For a company trying to enforce a relatively minor dress-code rule, that was a remarkable amount of attention.
The story had everything needed to spread.
It was easy to understand.
It involved a visual contrast that translated instantly across languages.
There was humor.
There was a workplace dispute.
There was a clear rule.
And there was an ingenious workaround.