Overweight & Under Pressure : Millions of Americans face bias in the workplace; they are often seen as lazy, stupid and unhealthy.

“It’s the last bastion of outright discrimination. People not only discriminate against the obese but think it’s all right to do so.”

According to University of Vermont psychologist Esther D. Rothblum, and others who study the issue, weight bias in the workplace is a concern for millions of Americans. Many employers--such as fire departments and airlines--have well-known employee weight standards. Many more companies have no written rules but avoid hiring the overweight anyway, says Lewis Maltby, an expert on workplace discrimination with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“There is no question a lot of discrimination is based on weight in situations where it has no impact on their jobs,” he says.

“My strong belief is most of it is invisible. There may be a few operations, like airlines, that have weight charts and they will be very open about it. But much more common is situations where there is no weight guideline but, because many people discriminate against fat people, they are just not hired.”

Sometimes, employers are concerned about someone’s physical ability to do a job. That is one of the questions raised in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court involving a former Rhode Island nursing student who claims that she was dismissed because she was too fat.

Other times, however, discrimination may occur when weight has no bearing on performance but hinders hiring or career advancement because of employers’ stereotypes that link heavy people to poor work habits or poor health.

Two studies completed by Rothblum and her colleagues at the University of Vermont suggest that overweight people, particularly women, encounter frequent, and often arbitrary, barriers in getting jobs and promotions.

Further, the studies find that employers appear to hold women to stricter appearance standards than men, says Rothblum, an associate professor of clinical psychology.

Researchers surveyed 453 people, including members of the National Assn. to Advance Fat Acceptance, an advocacy group based in Sacramento. Subjects were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire about their employment experiences.

“We found the heavier someone was, the more episodes of employment discrimination they mentioned,” Rothblum says. “They were more likely to say they were not hired, were charged higher insurance premiums, were pressured to lose weight, were fired or not promoted.

“But there was a large gender difference. For men, they had to be quite overweight before they (had) these experiences.”

For example, among people considered moderately overweight--30% to 40% over average weight--none of the men said that weight prevented them from being hired, while 30% of the women said it had.

“Being female means that employment discrimination seems to kick in at a lower weight than it does for men,” Rothblum says.

One well-educated professional woman who is very obese told researchers that “although my field does not require an ‘attractive’ appearance, it still counts in obtaining more desirable positions. Being fat and female definitely makes it difficult to reach my goals in a tough job market.”

Among the obese--usually those weighing more than 300 pounds--41% of men and 61% of women reported that weight prevented them from getting a job.

Sometimes, respondents said, they were told that weight was the reason they were not hired or promoted. But in other cases, weight discrimination was only suspected--a drawback that could skew the study, Rothblum says.

However in another study designed to be more objective, two groups of college students were asked to rate identical job resumes. One group received a photograph of a fat woman with the resume and the second group received a photograph of an average-weight woman.

The group rating the resume of the heavier woman gave her a much lower rating in ability, willpower and energy level than the group rating the average-weight woman. They also would have given the overweight woman a lower starting salary. This type of study has been performed frequently by other researchers with similar results.

“The two studies together. . .seem to indicate that employment discrimination is real,” Rothblum says. “People are not making it up.”

Other studies have shown that weight bias can begin in the schools, she says. Teachers might not expect as much from overweight students or motivate them to attain certain job-related skills.

One student told the Vermont researchers: “While attending a lecture in college, a professor stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence and said, ‘When are you going to lose weight? You’re too fat.’ ”

More studies are needed to identify the ways that overweight people are denied equal opportunity in the workplace.

“We actually suspect--although people might criticize us for this assumption--that many of the fat people in the NAAFA study were not even aware of many instances where they were being discriminated against,” Rothblum says.

Overweight people have little recourse to deal with discrimination, experts say. Even if the individual has evidence that weight was an issue, only one state, Michigan, has a law forbidding discrimination based on weight and height, says Sally E. Smith, executive director of the National Assn. to Advance Fat Acceptance.

Discrimination is often subtle. In a New Jersey case, a judge ruled that a 5-foot-8, 270-pound man was illegally fired from his job as an office manager of a rental car agency because his employers thought his weight made him unsuitable for promotion. The employers argued that the man was fired because of high turnover on his staff.

“We get a lot of calls from people who believe they were discriminated against in hiring,” Smith says.” It’s a real tough one to prove. Rarely are employers saying we’re not hiring you because you’re too fat.”

Smith says her organization advises people who suspect weight discrimination to contact the ACLU and file a complaint with their state’s human rights commission.

“They have to be persistent, though, because this isn’t an issue human rights commissions jump on,” she says.

Smith also advises people to attend a support group meeting arranged through the NAAFA. “It’s a time when these people feel really alone,” she says.

Overweight people are often devastated to learn that others think they lack the skills or energy to do a job, no matter what kind of education and credentials they have, says Joyce Rue-Potter, founder of a national support group for the obese, Abundantly Yours, based in San Diego.

“We got fat, not stupid. But a lot of people equate sluggish of body, sluggish of mind,” Rue-Potter says.

This stereotype can prevent some overweight people from making routine advances through the job ranks, experts find. The Vermont study showed large numbers of obese people believe they were not promoted because of their weight. And 69% of obese men and 68% of women were urged to lose weight by their employers.

Overweight people might limit their own opportunities by presenting the image that they do not care about their careers, Rue-Potter says.

“If you take an overweight person with low self-esteem, they may not dress as well or look as well because they feel crummy about themselves,” she says.

Conversely, some try to make up for their image problem by working harder.

“When they are seriously overweight what they tend to do is overcompensate,” Rue-Potter says. “They become over-achievers. They feel they have to be better than the next guy. What that did to me is put me under a lot of stress.”

In jobs where physical skill is not required, employers have no basis for believing that overweight people do less well, experts say. In these cases, Rue-Potter and Smith say employers may shy away from hiring or promoting fat people because of stereotypes.

“There are a whole range of stereotypes about fat people and employers are subject to them, too,” Smith says. “Fat people are lazy. Fat people are slobby. Fat people take more sick time because fat people are unhealthy.”

While many employers reject the idea that fat people aren’t as smart and hard-working, poor health is commonly an issue, the ACLU’s Maltby says. That belief has the potential to do the greatest harm to overweight job applicants, he says, because employers are facing growing health care costs.

According to Maltby, some employers are looking for ways to hire only people they view as “probably healthy.” Excess weight has been associated with chronic health disorders including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

“What is beginning to come out is some data that show certain lifestyle choices are less healthy than others,” Maltby says. “And because employers are picking up a major share of employees’ health-care costs . . . there is a real economic incentive for employers to discriminate against employees who make these unhealthy choices.”

For example, the ACLU is preparing a report on workplace discrimination that claims 1,000 U.S. companies will not hire smokers, Maltby says.

“What is really scary to me is there are a lot of other things that are marginally unhealthy: being overweight, eating junk food, not getting enough exercise, drinking beer, riding a motorcycle and downhill skiing,” he says. “Probably all those things, on average, increase an employee’s health-care costs.”

The larger question becomes: Can an employer discriminate against unhealthy lifestyles?

“If your health, not job performance, is a legitimate basis for employment, where do you draw the line?” Maltby says. “There are an unlimited amount of things that are not healthy.”

Maltby cites as examples an Indiana man who did not smoke at work but who says he was fired for smoking in his home and a Georgia company that proposed a pre-employment cholesterol test as a factor for hiring but later dropped the controversial plan.

Refusing to hire overweight people because they are believed to be unhealthy is a bias that can be easily and silently practiced, he says. Smokers can lie about the habit to qualify for a job. But overweight people can’t hide what is at issue.

“It’s easy to tell if someone is fat,” he says.