Women who are obese are more likely to be discriminated against by employers, a new study has found.
The Monash University study, published in the Journal of Obesity, used the same people, with the same resume and experience pre and post bariatric surgery to examine whether being overweight jeopardised employment opportunities.
The lead researcher of the study, Dr Kerry O’Brien said the purpose of the study was not disclosed to the subjects throughout the research, as doing so could impact the results.
The team also looked at how body image and personality factors including authoritarianism and social dominance orientation was related to the discrimination surrounding obesity.
The rates of obesity in Australia are increasing, and many experts are calling for a "fat tax," a "sugar tax," bans on advertising junk foods to children and front-of-pack-labelling.
O’Brien and his colleague Janet Latner, from the University of Hawaii, said one of the interesting aspects of the findings was that the participants’ own body image was closely associated with obesity discrimination.
Therefore, the question must be asked whether employers are discriminating due to actual weight, or making judgements on personalities which are the result of the person’s opinion about their own appearance.
“The higher participants’ rated their own physical attractiveness and importance of physical appearance, the greater the anti-fat prejudice and discrimination,” O’Brien said.
“One interpretation of this finding might be that we feel better about our own bodies if we compare ourselves to, and discriminate against, fatter people, but we need to test this experimentally.”
This study is the first to show a relationship between self-reported measures of obesity prejudice and actual obesity discrimination.
The results suggest that a belief in the superiority of some individuals over others is related to the perception that obese individuals deserve fewer privileges and opportunities than non-fat individuals.
“Our findings show that there is a clear need to address obesity discrimination, particularly against females, who tend to bear the brunt of anti-fat prejudice. Prejudice reduction interventions and policies need to be developed,” O’Brien said
“It’s also becoming clear that the reasons for this prejudice appear to be related to our personalities and how we feel about ourselves, with attributions, such as ‘obese people are lazy, gluttonous, etc’ merely acting as self-justifications for the prejudice.”
The subject’s resumes, with a small photo of the applicant attached, were viewed by employers who rated their suitability, starting salary and employability.
“We used pictures of women pre-and post-bariatric surgery, and varied whether participants saw a resume that had a picture of an obese female attached, or the same female but in a normal weight range having undergone bariatric surgery,” Obrien said.
“We found that obesity discrimination was displayed across all selection criteria, such as starting salary, leadership potential, and likelihood of selection for the job.”
The researchers categorised the subjects prior to the resume submissions using the Universal Measure of Bias (UMB) score, which predicted actual obesity job discrimination.
They found that the higher a subject’s the UMB, the more likely they were to discriminate against obese candidates.
“Our findings show that there is a clear need to address obesity discrimination, particularly against females, who tend to bear the brunt of anti-fat prejudice,” O’Brien said.
Men did not appear to be discriminated against in the same way.
The paper does not go into detail about the nature of jobs being applied for, so it is unclear if the candidates were applying for those which require a certain level of stamina and fitness.
What do you think of this study? Are you an obese person who has been discriminated against in your employment?