LONDON — When Nicola Thorp was sent home for refusing to wear high heels to her job as a receptionist in London’s financial district, she did not cower in her sensible flats. She got even.

Ms. Thorp, an actress, helped spur a popular revolt in Britain after she started a petition calling for a law that would prevent women from having to suffer from what she considered outdated and sexist dress codes at the office. In her case, she had been told that her shoes needed to be a minimum of two inches high.

On Monday, more than two years after Ms. Thorp was sent home over her shoes, members of Parliament called on the government to tighten the rules so British women would never again be forced to wear high heels at the office.

“What we found shocked us,” Helen Jones, a member of Parliament for the Labour Party and chairwoman of the petitions committee dealing with the issue, told fellow lawmakers. She said British women were enduring double standards in the workplace that belonged more in the 1850s than in modern times.