So you want to land an exclusive research position in a highly competitive, male-dominated profession. You’ve employed a resume writing service, a career coach and boned up on all you can about the company and the field you’re desperately trying to enter. The best part is that you know the company is trying very hard to hire more women so you’re feeling pretty confident. Unfortunately, someone less qualified gets your coveted job. What happened? Next time, try to be uglier.
According to an article on Yahoo! Finance, gender bias now has a new layer – Appearance. The article cites the Physical Attractiveness Bias In Hiring study that found hiring managers for finance, engineering and research were not likely to hire attractive females even if their I.Q. was north of 150.
“One of the researchers says, ‘In these professions [such as manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor], being attractive was highly detrimental to women.’ This was only the case for women. Extraordinarily attractive men weren’t found to be discriminated against.
In general, however, survey after survey concluded that attractive, thin women made more money than their less attractive counterparts and were hired more on looks than resume.
Yale’s Daniel Hamermesh was able to discern, ” attractive men earn 9% more than unattractive men, and attractive women earn 4% more than unattractive women.” Still a gender bias?!
Women who are overweight are penalized 7-12% in pay while overweight men are not affected at all, says the “Health and” Wealth survey by Jay Zagorsky.
Posture, make-up, height, facial hair, and symmetry all play a part in hiring says Alyson Shontell who wrote the article, Ways Your Appearance Affects Your Paycheck.
Suddenly, the job hunt gets more complicated, but are we surprised?
