biases changed over time.

Researchers examined data collected over a nine year period that

measured implicit and explicit bias against certain marginalized

groups. When people were asked to evaluate their own explicit biases,

data showed that over the course of those nine years, racism dropped

by 37 percent.

Anti-gay attitudes declined by nearly half.

And bias against high weight people declined by 15 percent.

But when they measured implicit bias, which are our assumptions and

attitudes that we may not be aware of or willing to express, it

showed something much different.

The research found that people were drastically underestimating their

own biases.

Unconscious racism had only declined by 17 percent.

Anti-gay sentiments declined by a third.

And bias against high -weight people actually increased by 5 percent.

One of the things we know about intergroup relations is what's

supposed to happen is when you have more contact with, say, a person

who doesn't look like you, it should reduce your prejudice for that

person the more you interact with them and the better quality

relationships you have with them.

And what's interesting about weight is that doesn't seem to be

happening. And we don't really know exactly why.

But we do know that stigma, particularly for weight, is really,

really hard to reduce.

Studies show that these negative attitudes have had an impact on high

weight people in the workplace.

We live in a society where negative stereotypes towards people who

have high body weight are very common.

And those are stereotypes that people are lazy or lacking willpower

or discipline or are even less intelligent than others because of

their body weight. And those kinds of stereotypes and negative

attitudes become translated into overt forms of unfair treatment and

discrimination. Michigan is the only state that has passed

legislation that makes weight discrimination explicitly illegal.

And there are a handful of cities that have passed

anti-discrimination ordinances that address weight.

But there is currently no federal law protecting high weight people

from discrimination.

So how much weight discrimination is there in the workplace and what

can we do about it? There is a lot of disagreement about what

language to use when referring to high weight people.

Elizabeth Kristen is the director of the Gender Equity and LGBT

Rights Program for a non-profit organization called Legal Aid at Work

in California. In 2002, she wrote an article for UC Berkeley Law

Review titled "Addressing the Problem of Wage Discrimination in

Employment," which explored how this issue can be handled using

existing laws.

I think there's been a real medicalization at times of the issue of

weight. And so people, I think generally are comfortable with this

language of obesity and body mass index.

But it's actually a really alienating experience for people who have

what these days were calling high -weight individuals

Because it's very factual.

It's very much not implying a whole bunch of medical judgments about

the way. But it is recognizing the reality that people, at least in

our current society, who have different body weights, may face

different barriers to society.

A lot of the academic community still uses medical terms such as

"obese" or "overweight."

But many activists and other high-weight individuals feel these terms

pathologize their bodies.

For the purposes of this video, we've chosen to use the terms "high

-weight" and "people of size," except when referring specifically to

research that uses specific terminology.

High-weight individuals report discrimination in all aspects of life,

but specifically in the workplace.

Mary Himmelstein is an assistant professor at Kent State University

who studies weight stigma.

People with obesity are seen as less hirable, are seen as having less

supervisory potential, are hired less often — when they are, are

hired at lower salaries.

If it's in a job that's existing, people are willing to penalize them

more relative to thin applicants.

What's really interesting about this literature is even when you have

a resumé of an unqualified applicant who's thin, they're still seen

as better for the job than a higher body weight applicant who is

qualified for it. There are also reports of people of size being

relegated to what researchers call non-contact positions.

If you imagine a receptionist, for example, someone who can be the

face of the business, someone who every client comes in and interacts

with, it's very unlikely that the receptionist would be the high

weight individual. If they do hire a high-weight individual, they'd

be more likely to put them in a job behind the scenes in the

mailroom, for example, or somewhere where they're not going to be the

face of the company interacting with the public.

And the discrimination worsens when other factors are taken into

consideration, such as gender.

It does tend to be something that more women report than men,

particularly at lower levels of overweight compared to men.

So for women, for example, weight discrimination may kick in even if

their BMI is only a little bit higher than what we would consider to

be at a normal or thinner body type.

Whereas for men that weight discrimination doesn't kick in until

higher levels of obesity.

High-weight people are also consistently paid less than their thinner

colleagues. A 2004 study found that obese men made 3.4

percent less than their thinner counterparts and obese women made 6.1

percent less. Where you start on the ladder is really important for

where you end up on the ladder for salary.

So if you start low at salary, that means even if you're getting

increases in bumps, you're essentially going to stay lower.

And if you're also getting lower increases, then you might see a

larger gap as you move up in the work force rather than a smaller

one. A 2009 study estimates that between five and 22 percent of top

female CEOs in the U.S.

were overweight. The same study found that a lot more male CEOs were

overweight somewhere between 45 and 61 percent, suggesting that

standards are more forgiving for men when it comes to body size.

And the discrimination documented in these studies doesn't stop at

hiring or wages.

Inappropriate comments and interactions with colleagues at work can

sometimes rise to the level of harassment.

Workplace harassment looks like, at least in the case law that I

talked about in my article, was really open, almost playground

harassment that you would imagine seeing at a great school.

You know, people being called names like Fatty or Butterball, you

know, those kinds of names.

That's clearly inappropriate in the workplace, but it also may be

illegal. This treatment can also come in more subtle forms.

Every single employment experience that I've had has had some

negative experience for sure.

That's Lauren Haber Jonas.

She's the CEO of Part & Parcel, a plus-sized clothing company that

offers customers the opportunity to earn a commission through their

partnership program.

My first job out of college was at a Fortune 10 company, a very large

tech company. And we were given t-shirts as like a cohort of college

grads joining the company.

And there was not one in my size , men or women.

So I was the person that had to figure out how to cut the cut the

sides up my t-shirt and sew them together with shoelaces at the time

during a retreat. She realized how difficult it was for plus-sized

women to access professional clothing.

And it led to feeling like she didn't belong at work.

The real sort of crux of Part & Parcel was was for me as an 18 year

old kid in college wearing a man's suit to two college internship

interviews. And I still vividly remember what it was like to not only

be chastised overtly from both the interviewers and my peers, but to

feel out of place and therefore less confident.

We started specifically with workwear product for these reasons.

We have heard from women time and time again that she's 35.

She's 40. She hasn't worn a non-stretchy pants since she was 18.

Can you imagine walking into a high -powered environment or job

interviewing environment in an leggings?

Additionally, physical workspaces are often not designed with high

-weight employees needs in mind.

Other things that people tend to experience in the workplace that we

don't tend to think about are things like physical barriers.

So having chairs that have arms on them that not necessarily all

people can easily fit into can be a problem and an embarrassing

problem to have to go to your co-worker to address.

Research shows that experiencing weight stigma in the workplace has

severe impacts on people's well-being.

We know that when people experience weight stigma, that this worsens

health not just in terms of their emotional well-being, but also

their physical health as well.

And so I think it's helpful to really think about weight stigma, not

only as a social justice issue, but also as a public health issue

that we need to address.

Research shows that people who have experienced weight stigma have

higher rates of psychological disorders such as depression or

anxiety. And they are less likely to want to engage in physical

activity or exercise.

There are also studies that show experiencing weight stigma causes

overeating or binge eating.

There are also studies documenting physical side effects to weight

stigma that can be measured independent of someone's body weight.

It induces stress in your body and you can see that in your

physiological systems and that in and of itself actually can cause a

number of problems down the line.

So if this is something that you are experiencing over and over and

over again and it's essentially a normal part of your everyday life,

then eventually five, 10, 15 years down the road, you're going to

start to see problems in your biological systems in your body and the

cardiovascular system, and the endocrine system as a result of wear

and tear from the extra stress that you're getting from being

stigmatized. And again, over and beyond BMI.

Despite a large body of academic research documenting weight

discrimination in the workplace, there aren't comprehensive laws

addressing the issue.

That word, for example, weight showing up in the statute and saying

it's illegal for an employer to discriminate on that basis is

actually a very rare part of the law in the United States.

The state of Michigan has had a law prohibiting weight and height

discrimination since the 70s.

It was really on the vanguard, but no other states successfully

followed that. There is substantial support from Americans for laws

to make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of weight.

But we've also looked at public support for kind of creating a new

form of legislation that would specifically prohibit weight

discrimination in the workplace.

That would make it illegal for employers to refuse to hire someone

because of their weight or to assign them lower wages or to terminate

them from a position unfairly because of their weight.

We're seeing as much as 80 percent of folks in our studies across the

country are supporting these measures.

So why hasn't there been more legislation addressing this issue?

The kinds of opposing arguments that have been raised in the past are

concerns that if we pass a law like this, that it would open the

floodgates for lawsuits, for example.

But if we look at the case of Michigan, that hasn't been the case at

all. In fact, the opposite.

We really have seen very few cases, probably because it's sending a

message that people are aware of and they're preventing these issues

from happening in the first place.

Many of the experts we spoke with suggested that employers take the

initiative to try to prevent discrimination without formal

legislation requiring it.

The best companies, the ones who take either H.R.

practices really seriously.

They're going to conduct training for their frontline managers.

They're going to make sure that they intervene and stop weight based

discrimination because it can lead to a lawsuit.

And even if a company ultimately prevails in a lawsuit about weight

discrimination, lawsuits are going to be for a company, expensive,

distracting — not what you want of you spending your time on.

Plus, why would weight discrimination bring any value to your

company? Why would you want to indulge people to, you know, harass

people with these kind of schoolyard epithets like, you know, Fatty

and Butterball? I have received increasing interest from employers

about what they can do to address this problem.

And, you know, I think within the workplace, this is a logical topic

that needs to be included in things like harassment, training or

diversity, education or also education and training for H.R.

folks and managers.

So there are a lot of, I think, relevant places and opportunities

where we can really increase education on this issue in the

workplace. You know, I've been in this field for almost 20 years and

I'm seeing more positivity, more support, more recognition of weight

stigma, t hat this is a legitimate form of bias in recent years than

I have before. And I think that shift in societal attitudes is going

to be very important.