Women, work, and weight: negative assessments of women and their weight in the workplace

Weight-based prejudice and discrimination are prevalent and especially notable in work settings. One-hundred and sixty undergraduate students participated in a study to examine weight stigma. They were shown images of women of different weights and offered different descriptions of their job status (no status, low status job, high status job). I hypothesized that there would be a significant association between image primes’ BMI, occupational status shown, and competency ratings, controlling for participants’ own BMI, anti-fat attitudes, weight concerns, and gender. Factorial ANCOVAs revealed that the weight of an image prime did not significantly affect competency ratings. The occupational status of an image did affect competency ratings, and anti-fat attitudes contributed significantly to the variance in said competency ratings. Future directions for reducing weight-based discrimination in the workplace are discussed.M.A.Includes bibliographical reference