How weight can affect women's pay

Being thin helps women’s careers

What you probably already know: Successful, wealthy career women tend to be thinner than women in lower paying jobs. Heavier women are promoted less than their colleagues. Overweight white women earn 4.5% less than thinner white women and those who are obese earn nearly 12% less. That’s not true for men. Overweight men actually out-earn their thinner colleagues. These findings are the same regardless of race, though overweight women of color make even less.

Why? As drugs like Ozempic come onto the scene, one might expect these numbers to increase. Access to weight loss treatments is often limited to those with good health insurance and those who can afford the medications. Increasingly, employers are offering weight management as a benefit.

What it means: It’s already difficult for women to move up the ranks and get promotions, but for heavier women, it’s even harder. Larger women are often characterized as “lazy or undisciplined,” even though diet and exercise are hardly the only factors at play in a person’s weight. If you want to educate yourself about fat-shaming and this cultural bias, I highly suggest following Aubrey Gordon, a bestselling author, podcaster and the star of a documentary called “Your Fat Friend.”

What happens now? I was just at a conference with 1,000 high-level women executives from around the world and one of the first things I noticed was how thin they all were. When it came to the presenters, nearly all of them were thin. For someone who is on the curvier end of the spectrum, it can be very isolating to look around the room and be conscious of your weight. I’ve also had other women comment on my weight before, often under the guise of complementing me for “looking thinner,” or wearing clothes that “are very slimming.” The first thing we can all do is cut that out. Then we can start to check our biases around promoting and hiring heavier women.