(Photo credit: luccast85)

By Tara Culp-Ressler and Bryce Covert

It’s no secret that women face a disproportionate amount of discrimination in the workplace. One-third of women say they have been subject to some type of workplace discrimination at some point in their careers — which can range from being paid less for the same type of work, to being denied a promotion, to being scrutinized more carefully than their male colleagues.

But the issues that women encounter on the job can run deeper than being unfairly assumed to be less competent or less valuable than their male counterparts. In many cases, women are up against very specific assumptions about their sexuality, their role as “objects” intended to be attractive to men, and their responsibility to prevent men from desiring them.

That attitude toward women’s bodies becomes entrenched at an early age, as girls are told what type of clothing is or isn’t appropriate to wear at school so they don’t “distract” the male students. And it carries over into the workplace, too, as adult women repeatedly receive the message that they are responsible for both obscuring and leveraging their sexuality for men’s purposes. Here are just five recent examples:

A New Jersey judge ruled that casino waitresses can be fired for gaining weight.

Twenty two former cocktail servers sued a popular casino in Atlantic City over a policy that forbids waitresses from gaining more than seven percent of their original body weight. The women were subject to regular weigh-ins, and the policy meant that a 130-pound woman was not allowed to gain more than 9.1 pounds. They alleged it was weight discrimination — but an Atlantic County Superior Court Judge disagreed. In July, the judge ruled that casino waitresses are essentially “sex objects,” and it’s okay to fire them for gaining weight because they are no longer fulfilling their contractual obligations.

Read More  Rape Culture At Work: Five Examples Of How Employers Turn Women Into Sex Objects | ThinkProgress.