42 Percent of Russians See Selves As Overweight

By Irina Titova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: August 8, 2012 (Issue # 1721)

Forty-five percent of Russians believe that society is prejudiced against overweight people and does not respect them, according to sociologists from the recruitment portal Superjob.ru, Interfax reported.

Women are more often inclined to think that being overweight leads to discrimination: Fifty-six percent of women believe it to be the case, compared to 36 percent of men.

However, 32 percent of the people who took part in the survey did not think overweight people faced prejudice, and 23 percent had no strong opinion on the matter.

The survey indicated that 35 percent of people think that overweight people are discriminated against during the recruitment process.

“Employers prefer to hire tall and slim people, regardless of their gender,” one survey participant said.

The sociologists said that at least 36 percent of employers confessed to paying attention to the shape and size of potential employees.

“Excess weight is a sign of weakness in 95 percent of cases. Why would we need employees with no willpower?” and “an overweight person has a whole range of complexes, and is therefore a bad worker,” were some of the responses given by employers.

Fifty-one percent of employers said that they do not pay any attention to a job candidate’s weight, saying, “We’ve got many nice people who are overweight in our company who work much better than their slim colleagues,” and “professional and personal qualities are much more important.”

The survey indicated that 42 percent of Russians believe they are overweight, comprising 45 percent of men and 39 percent of women. At least 19 percent of people said they would like to lose five kilograms, 17 percent said they needed to lose five to 10 kilograms, nine percent confessed to being overweight by 11 to 20 kilos, and six percent had more than 20 kilograms of excess weight.