I just read an article by Allison Van Dusen at Yahoo Finance. She writes that “[w]hile many victims of the bias have suspected their appearance has been hurting their careers, two new studies analyzing decades’ worth of research show just how pervasive the problem is. She explains that “[w]eight-based discrimination consistently affects every aspect of employment, from hiring to firing, promotions, pay allocation, career counselling and discipline.”
Further, she writes that “[t[he bulk of research has also shown that the bias tends to be felt most by overweight white women, who are battling both the glass ceiling and the stigma of being heavy. A 2004 study by Cornell University Associate Professor John Cawley found that when the average white woman puts on an additional 64 pounds, her wages drop 9%. (Some studies have shown that overweight white women are evaluated more harshly than overweight African American women and that African Americans tend to be more accepting of large body types, according to Roehling.)”

I hope I am NOT guilty of any copyright infringement here, and have credited Van Dusen below with a link to her full article in my attempt to fully credit her work. I had to include these quotes and to comment, simply to acknowledge that her article is exactly in keeping with my own perceived experience, particularly at times when I have been at my most overweight.

I am thankful that I am in the position to be able to correct my own body so that I will no longer experience such things! What about the millions whose bodies have manipulated them into being over weight. I do not understand how having the disease of obesity can equate with incompetence in anyone’s mind? Do they also think that people with diabetes, heart disease, or any other disease in which their body fights against them, can make them somehow stupid, incompetent or perhaps lazy or less willing to work than others? Why is obesity so funny or disgusting to the people who have and who continue to judge us?

Personally, I find nothing funny about this disease at all, and I hope that my lap band continues to protect me against it, just as insulin helps the diabetic and a pacemaker helps person’s with irregular heart beat. Hopefully the tool will soon begin to be recognized as the medically necessary tool that it is!

Do you think obesity is funny?

Have you every been felt the sting of workplace alienation?

http://ca.pfinance.yahoo.com/ca_finance_general/705/is-your-weight-affecting-your-career/