Research carried out in the UK and Canada found that prospective employers are more likely to hire a woman with a lower BMI than one with a higher one.
Most depressingly, the findings published in the journal PLOS One discovered that this weight-based prejudice did not apply to men. Collective eye roll.
The research was carried out by showing participants photos of both men and women that had been manipulated to represent different BMI levels. They were then asked to rate how likely they were to hire each person.
Results showed that the faces of women with a higher BMI were looked at less favourably than those with a lower BMI. But when it came to the men facial thinness did not affect whether they would be considered employable.
The researchers who conducted the study confirmed that for women even being slightly overweight can affect their job prospects with lead author Dennis Nickson quite rightly described the results to be ‘deeply unsettling’.
Discouragingly the researchers also explained that they thought this problem wasn't likely to disappear soon. ‘In both the UK and the US, weight is not a protected characteristic in fair employment laws,’ they wrote. This therefore meaning women have no legal protection when it comes to this form of discrimination.
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