From Biz Woman authored by Catlin Mullen:
“Weight-based discrimination affects more women than men and can influence both hiring and pay decisions.
Rebecca Pearl, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, writes that weight-based discrimination is experienced by 20 percent to 45 percent of women, compared to 6 percent to 28 percent of men.
A 2016 study found that weight discrimination had increased 66 percent over the previous decade and that the bias “appears to be socially acceptable and is reinforced by the media.”
Actress Melissa McCarthy, for example, told InStyle magazine about a journalist asking, “Are you shocked that you actually work in this business at your tremendous size?”
“I just remember all the blood drained out of me,” she said, calling it “fascinating” that male actors don’t face similar questions.
Rebecca Puhl, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut, told Huffington Post. that the stigma is “very pervasive,” and that “we need to think of broader-scale solutions to really try and address these inequities people are facing,”
Weight bias at work might take a greater toll on women’s careers than men’s partly because weight discrimination can occur at lower body weights for women than for men, the Perelman School of Medicine’s Pearl notes.
Weight bias often stereotypes people as sloppy, lazy, unintelligent and lacking willpower, according to Pearl, who writes that they also may be assumed to be more emotional, less outgoing and less conscientious. ”
