Weight stigma, also known as weightism, weight bias, and weight-based discrimination, is discrimination or stereotyping based on one's weight,

especially very large or thin people. The term is a misnomer as the stigma arises from the condition of being obese, or schadenfreude arising from the suffering from the disease, and not the body mass of the individual stigmatized in this manner. Weight stigma reflects internalized attitudes towards the obese that affects how those who are the targets of bias are treated. A person who is stigmatized possesses a weight that leads to a devalued social identity, and is often ascribed stereotypes or other labels denoting a perceived deviance which can lead to prejudice and discrimination. Common, weight-based, stereotypes are that obese persons are lazy, lack selfdiscipline, and have poor willpower, but also possess defects of intelligence and character. Common weightbased stereotypes of non-obese persons are that nonobese persons are unattractive, anorexic, unhealthy, diet and/or exercise excessively. Pervasive social portrayals of obesity create and reinforce biased attitudes. Ableism is a form of discrimination in which preference is shown to people who appear able-bodied. The language surrounding the definition of ableism is almost as charged as ableism itself, as many definitions rely on ideas like normal people as opposed to those who are abnormal, which raises the ire of activists. Some disabled activists even dislike the term ableism, preferring to use disabilism, which enforces the idea that this form of discrimination involves the targeting of people with obvious physical or mental disabilities. This term appears to have originated in the early 1980s, around the time that people with disabilities

became much more politically and socially active. Historically, disability had been a cause of shame and fear, but thanks to the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s in which people of color and women started fighting for their rights, the disabled community was inspired to follow suit. The rise of the AIDS virus in the West also created ample fodder for disabled activism, eventually leading to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, a groundbreaking piece of legislation in the fight against ableism. Like other -isms, ableism can be insidious, and so closely woven in society that people without obvious physical or mental disabilities might not even think about their ableist attitudes and the ableist structure of their society. For example, people with use of their legs may not consider how difficult navigation can be in a wheelchair. Albeism also penetrates language and society; terms like weak, lame, and retarded are all ableist, and widely used, even by people who are sensitive to other forms of discrimination. Ableism can make it hard for someone to get a job, force students out of some universities and colleges, create social barriers, and make basic life tasks very frustrating, especially for disabled individuals who want to live independent, active lifestyles. This form of discrimination also highlights the difference between people with obvious physical disabilities, like amputees, and people with hidden disabilities, like medical conditions which cause chronic illhealth without an outward manifestation of disability. Organizations designed to fight ableism can be found all over the world, working in a variety of ways to combat the various forms of ableism. Many of these

groups fight for inclusive accessibility, encouraging mandates to make public spaces accessible to people of all levels of physical ability, and they also fight against discriminatory practices in the workplace and in college admissions. They also perform outreach education to connect abled and disabled people. Individuals can also fight ableism, by reflecting on ableist attitudes which they may have and working to correct these attitudes. For example, the use of ableist terms could be avoided as carefully as people avoid racial epithets, and assumptions about the skills, abilities, and mental state of people with disabilities can be combated by interacting directly with the disabled community. Prejudice and discrimination against people with disabilities have existed all throughout history. The term ableism only arose during the civil rights movements in the United States and Britain during the 1960s and 1970s. During this era disability activists transformed religious and scientific understandings of disability into a political paradigm. In religious and scientific paradigms, disability is an individual characteristic. The disabled individual bears primary responsibility for enduring or remedying their disability through prayer in the religious or medical intervention in the scientific paradigm. Disabilities such as paraplegia and quadriplegia from spinal cord injury, acquired brain injuries and blindness to name a few leave little avenue for the latter, medical intervention. A common theme to both religious and scientific tradition is nondisabled should behave compassionately toward disabled persons. From the civil rights perspective, often called a minority oppression model, society creates disability by

creating physical and social environments hostile to persons different from the majority or normal abled culture. Often overlooked or dismissed its important to expect that disabled people also act compassionately and respectfully toward nondisabled people. Some believe it is ableism that prevents disabled people from full participation in the social fabric of their communities, rather than impairments in physical, mental, or emotional ability. Ableism emanates from attitudes and behaviors of individuals, communities, and institutions as well as from physical and social environments. If you have ever been told your thoughts and feelings are not normal, been made feel excluded or less than, that you dont belong or fit in, youve experienced ableism. Discriminatory attitudes and practices that promote unequal treatment of spinal cord injury wheelchair bound people are common being a visually obvious physical disability with many pre-conceived limitations. Ableism may be direct or indirect, based on common belief, scientific norms, or false assumptions. Stereotypes can prevent members of the majority nondisabled group from ever seeing one from a minority disabled group as an individual. Pity, lowered expectations, normalization as beneficence, limitations in self-determination, labeling and eugenics are common components of ableism. With writing this article in mind I recently asked a group of associates if they ever described me as a cripple. Cripple being somewhat of a derogatory term in Australia like Spaz is in the US and UK. They preferred to use my name, then wheelie or quad in

greater reference. They had no problem with me calling myself a cripple, or one wheelchair user calling another cripple or spaz, not exclusive to spinal cord injury or wheelchair users but in general between any two people with a disability. This small study group felt it inappropriate for a normal person to use the terms cripple or spaz. Quote: Like black Americans sometimes call each other nigger, but white people should never. Ableism is alive and well, labeling and pre-conceived notions are made of people with a disability before ever asking the disabled how they actually feel or would like to be referred to. A disabled person is automatically looked upon and treated as special or different, not normal.

In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA; 1992) supports nondiscrimination in employment, education, access to premises, accommodation, buying or selling land, activities of clubs, sport, administration of Commonwealth laws and programs, provision of goods and services, and facilities. The Disability Services Act (DSA; 1986) enables a person with a disability the right to achieve their individual capacity for physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development. In the United States, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 1975, 1997) requires schools to provide free and appropriate education for all students, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA; 1990) provides protection from discrimination and ensures equal opportunity for persons with disabilities in employment, state and local government services, public accommodations, commercial facilities, and

transportation. It also mandates the establishment of TDD/telephone relay services for qualifying persons with disability.

In the United Kingdom, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA; 1995, 2005) requires public bodies to promote equal opportunities for disabled people. It aims to end the discrimination that many disabled people face by giving disabled people rights in the areas of employment, education, access to goods, facilities and services including larger private clubs and land-based transport services, buying or renting land or property including making it easier for disabled people to rent property and for tenants to make disability-related adaptations, functions of public bodies, and allows the government to set minimum standards so that disabled people can use public transport easily.

The inherent problem with any such acts of legislation is the inability to adequately protect the disabled from unspoken judgments and perceptions of inadequacy that can stigmatize and shadow a person throughout childhood and adulthood. Who enforces these acts in your average schoolyard or workplace? Certainly there is lag and faults implementing policy in any social environment, education is the key. Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex.[1] Sexist attitudes may stem from traditional stereotypes of gender roles,[2][full citation needed] and may include the belief that a person of one sex is intrinsically superior to a person of the other.[3] A job applicant may face discriminatory hiring practices, or (if hired) receive unequal

compensation or treatment compared to that of their opposite-sex peers.[4] Extreme sexism may foster sexual harassment, rape and other forms of sexual violence.[5] Gender-specific pejorative terms intimidate or harm another person because of their gender. Sexism can be expressed in language with negative gender-oriented implications,[33] such as condescension. Other examples include obscene language. Some words are offensive to transgender people, including "tranny", "she-male", or "he-she". Intentional misgendering (assigning the wrong gender to someone) and the pronoun "it" are also considered pejorative Wage gap Main article: Gender pay gap

Gender pay gap in average gross hourly earnings according to Eurostat 2008[48] Several studies have found that women earn a smaller average wage than men. Many economists and feminist scholars have argued that this is the result of systemic gender-based discrimination in the workplace. Others, however, maintain that the wage gap is a result of differences between the choices that men and women make in the workplace, such as more women than men choosing to be full-time parents or work fewer hours to be part-time parents.

Eurostat found a persistent, average gender pay gap of 17.5 percent in the 27 EU member states in 2008.[48] Similarly, the OECD found that female full-time employees earned 17 percent less than their male counterparts in OECD countries in 2009.[36][37] In the United States, the female-to-male earnings ratio was 0.77 in 2009; female full-time, year-round (FTYR) workers earned 77 percent as much as male FTYR workers. Women's earnings relative to men's fell from 1960 to 1980 (60.7 percent to 60.2 percent), rose rapidly from 1980 to 1990 (60.2 to 71.6 percent), leveled off from 1990 to 2000 (71.6 to 73.7 percent) and rose from 2000 to 2009 (73.7 to 77.0 percent).[49][50] When the first Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, female full-time workers earned 58.9 percent as much as male full-time workers.[49] The gender pay gap has been attributed to differences in personal and workplace characteristics between women and men (such as education, hours worked and occupation), innate behavioral and biological differences between men and women and discrimination in the labor market (such as gender stereotypes and customer and employer bias). Women interrupt their careers to take on child-rearing responsibilities more frequently than men.[51] A study by professor Linda Babcock in her book Women Don't Ask shows that men are eight times more likely to ask for a pay raise, suggesting that pay inequality may be partly a result of behavioral differences between the sexes.[52] However, studies generally find that a portion of the gender pay gap remains unexplained after accounting for factors assumed to influence earnings; the unexplained portion of the wage gap is attributed to gender discrimination.[53] Estimates of the discriminatory component of the gender pay gap vary. The OECD estimated that approximately 30% of the gender pay gap across OECD countries is due to

discrimination.[36] Australian research shows that discrimination accounts for approximately 60 percent of the wage differential between women and men.[54][55] Studies examining the gender pay gap in the United States show that a large portion of the wage differential remains unexplained, after controlling for factors affecting pay. One study of college graduates found that the portion of the pay gap unexplained after all other factors are taken into account is five percent one year after graduating and twelve percent a decade after graduation.[56][57][58][59] A study by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) found that women graduates are paid less than men doing the same work and majoring in the same field.[60] Wage discrimination is theorized as contradicting the economic concept of supply and demand, which states that if a good or service (in this case, labor) is in demand and has value it will find its price in the market. If a worker offered equal value for less pay, supply and demand would indicate a greater demand for lower-paid workers. If a business hired lower-wage workers for the same work, it would lower its costs and enjoy a competitive advantage. According to supply and demand, if women offered equal value demand (and wages) should rise since they offer a better price (lower wages) for their service than men do.[61] Research at Cornell University and elsewhere indicates that mothers are less likely to be hired than equally-qualified fathers and, if hired, receive a lower salary than male applicants with children.[62][63][64][65][66][67] The OECD found that "a significant impact of children on womens pay is generally found in the United Kingdom and the United States".[40] Fathers earn $7,500 more, on average, than men without children do.[68]

Possible causes According to Denise Venable at the National Center for Policy Analysis, the "wage gap" is not the result of discrimination but of differences in lifestyle choices. Venable's report found that women are less likely than men to sacrifice personal happiness for increases in income or to choose full-time work. She found that among adults working between one and thirty-five hours a week and part-time workers who have never been married, women earn more than men. Venable also found that among people aged 27 to 33 who have never had a child, women's earnings approach 98% of men's and "women who hold positions and have skills and experience similar to those of men face wage disparities of less than 10 percent, and many are within a couple of points".[69] Venable concluded that women and men with equal skills and opportunities in the same positions face little or no wage discrimination: "Claims of unequal pay almost always involve comparing apples and oranges". Glass ceiling Main article: Glass ceiling The term "glass ceiling" is used to describe a barrier to advancement based on gender discrimination. In academic achievement, improvements have been made. However, as of 1995 in the United States women received about half of all master's degrees but 9597% of the senior managers of Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 companies were male;[70] of Forbes Global 2000 companies, 5% of senior managers were women. The United Nations asserts that "progress in bringing women into leadership and decision making positions around the world remains far too slow."[71]

Sexist jokes can be a form of sexual objectification, which reduces the subject of the joke to an object (e.g., "What do you do when your dishwasher is broken?" Answer: "You hit her"). They not only objectify women or men, but can also condone violence or prejudice against men or women.[citation needed] "Sexist humorthe denigration of women through humorfor instance, trivializes sex discrimination under the veil of benign amusement, thus precluding challenges or opposition that nonhumorous sexist communication would likely incur."[88] A study of 73 male undergraduate students by Ford (2007) found that "sexist humor can promote the behavioral expression of prejudice against women amongst sexist men".[88] According to the study, when sexism is presented in a humorous manner it is viewed as tolerable and socially acceptable. "Disparagement of women through humor 'freed' sexist participants from having to conform to the more general and more restrictive norms regarding discrimination against women."[88]