Attractive Women Overlooked for ‘Masculine’ Jobs

Attractive women are usually accustomed to getting their way with everything, it is being said – and that includes landing a job they’ve applied for. While this is true in most cases, a recent study published in the Journal of Social Psychology and cited by the Daily Mail, shows that, when it comes to jobs perceived as mostly masculine, being good looking is actually a disadvantage – and may become the basis of a refusal.

Good looking women will most likely be overlooked for a position that is perceived as strictly masculine, while those who are not as fortunate in the looks department may be considered. As it happens, not the same applies to men, with the study revealing that handsome men will always be favored over the less handsome ones, regardless of the job they’re considered for. What this means is that double standards are still in high use today, even with all recent attempts at closing the gap between the two genders at the workplace.

“In these professions being attractive was highly detrimental to women. In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred. This wasn’t the case with men which shows that there is still a double standard when it comes to gender,” Lead researcher Professor Stefanie Johnson, from University of Colorado Denver Business School, says. The jobs for which attractive women were overlooked from the start include, as per the Mail, “director of security, hardware salesperson, prison guard and tow truck driver.”

“One could argue that, under certain conditions, physical appearance may be a legitimate basis for hiring. In jobs involving face-to-face client contact, such as sales, more physically attractive applicants could conceivably perform better than those who are less attractive. However, it is important that if physical attractiveness is weighed equally for men and women to avoid discrimination against women,” Johansson further says.

However, being good looking still comes with plenty advantages – just not when applying for masculine jobs. The same research has found that more attractive women also have bigger salaries, more favorable judgment in trials, better performance evaluations and higher levels of admission to college, the same publication informs. It only in this narrow area of masculine jobs that good looking women become victims of the so-called “beauty is beastly” phenomenon. 

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