Discrimination?

An Indian high court ruled that Air India, the state-owned airline, could deny employment and stop them from flying to would-be female flight attendants if they were overweight.

The ‘Times of India’ reports:

In the highly competitive industry of civil aviation, the company has to focus on the personality of its employees," the ruling said. "By the very nature of their jobs, their overall physical personality is one of the primary considerations."

Another reason for the ruling, according to the court, was the link between weight, athleticism, and the ability to handle emergency situations. While this news did ignite an uncanny barrage of puns and wisecracks in news headlines -- "Air hostesses suffer heavy defeat in India," "India grounds 'fat' air hostesses," "You're too fat to fly, court tells hostesses"

 

 

1. Is ‘weight’ a reasonable criterion to evaluate fitness and personality?
2. Has the criterion of ‘weight’ emerged out from some immoral or prejudiced thinking?
3. If the criterion of ‘weight’ was reasonable, was communicated to all, and it resulted in loss of job for some, but not for all, would it still be discriminatory. Like in this case, the grounded airhostesses alleged that the male cabin crewmembers did not have to follow the weight specification.
4. Even if ‘weight’ was not the best criterion to evaluate, but if it was communicated as the evaluative criteria, but later not considered during evaluation, wouldn’t it be discriminatory against those people who did well on the evaluative criterion.

 

Can we categorise the above mentioned case as that of being discriminatory.