Weight-based discrimination in the Italian Labor Market: how do ethnicity and gender interact?

Access to Italian job market is characterized by a strong degree of discrimination. In this study, we analyze three kinds of discrimination together: gender, race and weight, in order to investigate whether gender and race increase or decrease the impact of weight-based discrimination. To do so, we sent fictitious résumés including photos of either obese or thin applicants in response to online joboffers. The results indicate that the strongest kind of discrimination is the racial one, and that discrimination based on weight appears to be stronger for women than men.