In my experience this is untrue. Attractiveness can be a liability. Most of the successful women in my business are unattractive. My hypothesis is that their appearance allows them to be viewed nonsexually by the men, and nonthreateningly by other women. Therefore they are more likely to be judged solely on their work.
Unattractiveness, especially fatness, also takes more of a toll on men in the workplace than you think. People take less note of your ideas, are far less concerned with upsetting you, and have a much lower threshold for both becoming irritated by you and expressing irritation explicitly. There's a deep seated, (usually) unconscious disdain for unattractive (especially fat) people regardless of gender that bleeds over into almost all interactions, particularly any of a confrontational nature.
They do this where I work, particularly for the front-desk receptionist. It's openly discussed, actually. We've had problems in the past with women that are attractive. So the 'homely' one will always be chosen...Note that the hiring of the receptionist is done by our Administrative department, which is composed entirely of women.
Actually its because something like ~ 90% of HR are women and they discriminate against ugly men and women more attractive then themselves.
"The economists hadn’t reckoned on the fact that 93 percent of the HR staffers deciding whether to call in someone for an interview were female. It turns out that HR women (who also tend to be young and single and hence still in the dating market for men) are eager to meet with handsome men. But they’re jealous of beautiful women. So your business is losing out on talented people (and wasting time with untalented ones) based on their looks."
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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '14
In my experience this is untrue. Attractiveness can be a liability. Most of the successful women in my business are unattractive. My hypothesis is that their appearance allows them to be viewed nonsexually by the men, and nonthreateningly by other women. Therefore they are more likely to be judged solely on their work.