LONDON Women are up to ten times more likely to think they have poor body image than men, DPA reported researchers from Glasgow University as saying on Tuesday.

Despite the fact that more men are overweight, more women believe they are too fat -- even when they are a perfectly healthy weight for their height.

The huge gender gap in body image is even seen among people from professional backgrounds, the study found. Researchers from Glasgow University published their findings in the ***Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health***.

They interviewed 1,500 male and female supervisors and managers in a bank and 2,000 people in clerical, technical and academic posts at an unnamed British university the study was unusual in that it focused entirely on people from the top social classes, holding down full-time, non manual jobs.

The men and women were asked to give details of their body mass index (BMI) -- weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared -- which experts use to assess whether someone is overweight or clinically obese.

A BMI between 18.5 to 24.9 was considered "normal", more than 25 was classed as overweight and over 30 was deemed obese. They were also asked to rate themselves in terms of whether they thought they were "about the right weight", too heavy or too light for their height.

Almost four out of ten (39.4 percent) of the male bank workers and a third of the men at the university were overweight, compared to a fifth of the female bankers and 29.1 percent of the women university employees.

The male bank workers were significantly more likely in statistical terms to be overweight than their female counterparts, although there was no significant gender difference at the university.

But even after taking into account their BMIs, women who worked in the bank were ten times more likely than the men to say they were too heavy. The female university workers were three times more likely than their male peers to say they were too big.