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Women's weight found to affect job, income
Study indicates bias in marriage, career
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff
Weight can have startling consequences for women's financial
well-being, careers, and marriage prospects, according to
research that found that women -- but not men -- suffer
economic harm from being overweight.
The first-of-its-kind study found that the heavier the
woman, the worse her financial situation will be 13 to 15
years in the future.
In fact, the effect of weight on women's fortunes was so
strong, that women with high school diplomas will have the
same future household income as women with a four-year
college degree but who weigh twice as much, according to the
study.
For men, extra weight had no impact on their earnings,
careers, or marriage prospects.
Much of the economic effect of weight on women's fortunes,
the study found, occurs not because of job discrimination
but marriage discrimination: Heavier women are more likely
to end up marrying lower-income men or to be single. In
addition, the heavier the woman, the less prestigious her
job is likely to be.
The data appear to underscore what social scientists and
many women themselves have long asserted -- a
double-standard when it comes to weight. The study for the
first time gives the economic costs of this phenomenon,
showing heavy women can pay a steep personal and financial
price for their weight, in addition to the more widely
publicized health effects.
''This is one of the core fundamental bases of gender
inequality in the United States. Women are held to standards
of objectified physical appearance that men are not," said
New York University sociologist Dalton Conley, the study's
lead author. He explained that weight worked against women
as they competed to get married and secure their financial
futures.
''The marriage market is where physical capital, if you want
to call it that, gets converted into economic capital," said
Conley. ''Marriage is an exchange relationship where men
provide income, and women, in addition to child rearing,
provide sexual status."
The life of Caryn McCormack, 37, of Bridgewater illustrates
Conley's findings.
She battled weight from an early age, topping 200 pounds by
the time she graduated from high school. She never dated and
was acutely self-conscious. After high school, she obtained
an associate's degree in nursing and started work at Milton
Hospital. She temporarily lost weight, but then ballooned to
385 pounds and developed rheumatoid arthritis, forcing her
to quit her job.
McCormack, who is 5-foot-5 wore XXXXXL-sized pants and
shirts and lived on a monthly disability payment she
received from the state. Teenagers would snicker as she
walked by. Strangers would give her unsolicited advice to
diet. A few times, people on the street made oinking noises
as she passed, she recalled in an interview.
''I wished people would take the time to see that I was a
decent person," she said. ''I really am a nice person."
In 1996, she married a heavy-set man, who worked in a
low-paying warehouse job and later in data entry. She has
since filed for divorce. And in the last two years, a
dramatic change: she has lost more than 250 pounds.
The new study finds that women in McCormack's situation face
grimmer prospects than their thinner counterparts over the
long run.
Conley and a graduate student, Rebecca Glauber, crunched
data that tracked about 1,300 women and 1,100 men for up to
15 years. It is the first study to look at the
socio-economic effects of body mass index, a ratio of weight
to height that is the standard measure of obesity, over such
duration. They looked at subjects' BMI in 1986, and then how
those people fared as of 1999 and 2001.
They were able to compute that each 1 percent increase in
women's BMI means a .6 percent decrease in future family
income. So, a 60-pound weight difference between two
5-foot-4 women would account for a 30 percent difference in
their future family incomes, such as $100,000 annually
compared with $70,000. Much of this income difference occurs
because the heavier women are, the poorer their spouses are
likely to be, the research found. Also at work is the fact
that heavier women are less likely to marry: For each 1
percent BMI increase, the prospects of matrimony decrease
.35 percent. Single women tend to have lower incomes.
Likewise, for every 1 percent increase in BMI, they found a
.4 percent decrease in future job prestige, with prestige
measured by public surveys long used by sociologists. So, a
100 percent difference in BMI -- a 5-foot-4 woman weighing
120 pounds versus one weighing 240 -- meant the difference
between becoming a lawyer, a high prestige job, and an
insurance agent, a medium prestige job or between a
medium-prestige secretary and a low-prestige housekeeper.
The paper has not been published yet, though it has been
presented at academic conferences and circulated to
economists by the Cambridge-based National Bureau of
Economic Research, a nonprofit clearinghouse for some of the
nation's most influential economics research. Conley and
Glauber analyzed data collected by the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics, a long-running survey of families run by the
University of Michigan that includes data on BMI, income,
careers, and marital status.
The researchers said they could not rule out that women's
socio-economic status at the start of the study affected
their weight, though they said their analysis indicated that
was highly unlikely.
Social scientists said the results were strong evidence of a
double standard in this country.
''In general, appearance is used more as a way of evaluating
women than men. Men are more often evaluated by their
achievements, while women are judged more on their
appearance," said Marlene B. Schwartz, codirector of the
Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders.
Steven Gortmaker, a Harvard School of Public Health
professor who has studied obesity, said pop culture imagery
perpetuates this double standard.
''There are large-size males who play sports who are honored
for that. Large-sized males aren't viewed negatively. For
females that's not the case at all. The norms for female
beauty are much leaner," he said.
That, said Janie Victoria Ward, who studies female
psychological development at Simmons College, leads to
prejudicial attitudes toward heavier women.
''We assume they have failed in some way, that they're
damaged," she said.
Dr. Caroline Apovian, director of nutrition and weight
management at Boston Medical Center, said she sees the
result in her clinic every day: 80 percent of the patients
are female, despite the fact that federal statistics
indicate that a higher percentage of men are overweight or
obese than women.
''Men are obese, too. But women are suffering more
psychological pain," she said. From talking to patients
about their lives, Apovian said she long ago concluded what
Conley's study found: ''Obese women are discriminated
against in marriage."
One of the women who walked into Apovian's clinic two years
ago was McCormack.
The BMC team helped her shed 119 pounds in one year through
diet and exercise. But with a history of heart disease in
the family, McCormack wanted to protect her health, so she
opted for gastric bypass surgery, or stomach stapling. The
procedure, done a year ago, dramatically diminished her
appetite. She lost another 135 pounds.
Family and friends congratulated her, the taunts and insults
abruptly ended, and men began to take notice. But shedding
the overweight mentality was not so easy.
''I think my brain hasn't caught up with my body. I'm still
trying to get my mind around the fact I'm not fat," said
McCormack. She now weighs about 130 pounds, and wears a size
8. She is thinking of getting a job. And she is ready to
make her first true foray into the singles scene. |
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