Can you discriminate against fat people

Employees they interacted with smiled less, made less eye contact, stood farther away from them, and tried to end the encounter more quickly than with men of normal weight. Some studies show that obese women encounter more discrimination than obese men. Scientists at the University of Exeter have found evidence that simply being a more overweight woman leads to lower opportunities in life, including lower income. They studied 70 genetic variants associated with body mass index, using data from , participants in the UK Biobank who were between 40 and 70 years old.

Even when qualified, it can be hard for an obese person to get a job, according to research Credit: Alamy. According to the study, if a woman was a stone 6. Obese women also are more likely than normal-weight women to work in jobs with an emphasis on physical activity, such as home health care, food preparation and childcare, and are less likely to hold positions that involve public interaction, according to a study by Jennifer Bennett Shinall, assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Obesity Action Coalition, based in Tampa, Florida, has developed a guide for employers around the world about weight bias in the workplace and ways to reduce it. Bias against overweight people is still acceptable to many Credit: Getty Images.

David Brittman, who has been overweight much of his life, recalls going to diversity training at a law firm where the Korean-American and African-American women leading the workshop talked about sex, racial, ethnic and religious discrimination. Now retired, Brittman says his forthrightness reduced the number of insults he received. But he occasionally was the subject of joking. Employees generally have little, if any, legal protection unless the courts consider their obesity a disability.

In the US, only the state of Michigan and some cities have laws barring discrimination based on body weight. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has brought several suits against employers by using the federal law prohibiting discrimination against disabled people, but with limited success so far.

An experienced West Virginia workplace discrimination attorney explains. What if someone is overweight? Can a company discriminate against an employee based on how much they weigh? Or is that against the law? The answer is more complicated than you might think. The Americans with Disability Act ADA contains many provisions which provide legal protections for many different people. The ADA does not include specific provisions that protect someone based on their weight. She was sent to work in the post room instead.

Karen not her real name; all the employees interviewed for this article requested anonymity before discussing their experiences worked for a clothing company. I asked if I could wear something else — I said I had clothes in the same style.

Only later, when she ended up in a wheelchair due to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome a disorder of the connecting tissue that had nothing to do with her weight , did Karen come to understand her earlier treatment in the workplace. But sitting in a wheelchair, I noticed people stopped looking at my body and started looking at my wheels — and it made me realise just how much of what I encountered in my earlier life was due to body shaming.

Louise, a manager at a telecom company in England, believes her career opportunities were also severely restricted by her weight. I was very good at my job, but found it difficult just to get invites to meetings, let alone extra work opportunities on projects. I thought I just needed to build my network. Then Louise started losing weight, down to a size It was a lift in my career.

He confirmed that being fat was holding me back at work. All over the world, countless studies reveal that overweight employees face widespread prejudice. To begin with, they are less likely to be hired for a job. In a study led by the psychologist Stuart W Flint of Sheffield Hallam University, participants were asked to evaluate candidates for different types of jobs.

Shown hypothetical CVs with photographs depicting fat and thin people, the participants clearly perceived men and women of average weight to be the most suitable for employment. Obese women were the least likely to be hired. The result of this prejudice is not only that overweight people stand less chance of getting a job; they are paid less, too. Overweight people also work longer hours , are considered less qualified for leadership positions and are expected to be less successful, according to numerous studies.

In her recently published bestselling memoir Hunger , the American author Roxane Gay describes the painful situations she encounters being obese. Time and again, she writes, organisers of literary events are embarrassed by her appearance. These reactions hurt, for so many reasons.

They illustrate how little people think of fat people, how they assume we are neither smart nor capable if we have such unruly bodies. Studies routinely find it is overweight women, in particular, who bear the brunt of this disrespect and discrimination.