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Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree
- nirbendavid 1mo agoCausation or correlation?
- esafak 1mo ago[dead]
- nemomarx 1mo agoLookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly. Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.
- john_chungus1 1mo ago[dead]
- theplumber 1mo agoI thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.
- mrguyorama 1mo agoNah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color" The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions. It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.
- gavinray 1mo agoMy mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one. Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/
- throwaway2037 1mo agoThis sounds like a great idea. Can you share more details about the story? Did she finally get a job?
- gavinray 1mo agoShe eventually did get a job, though not a great one. At that point she was willing to take pretty much anything.
- Izkata 1mo agoThe halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect I was gonna say "this is decades old", it's over a century old.
- itishappy 1mo agoI like "pretty privilege." In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"
- maerF0x0 1mo agoThe problem with pretty privilege is it's quite female centric. (It's not that normative to call a man pretty and intend it as a compliment) It ignores that it also applies to men who are attractive, tall, have strong (as in pronounced) masculine physical features
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- jaggederest 1mo agoRelevant sequence from 30 Rock - Jon Hamm lives in "The Bubble" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQoXOLlvT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQoXOLlvT0
- chneu 1mo agoHamm is a great example. He hazed multiple people in college, like burned a dudes dick, never apologized, and settled out of court. When asked about it he often used his mom's death to avoid the topic. Dude has never owned up to it. But cuz he's a funny attractive white dude nobody cares.
- cbsks 1mo agoMight be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.
- thesumofall 1mo agoThere might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world
- tgv 1mo agoCompanies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.
- elmo-shrugged 1mo agohonest question - did that cliche ever apply to women? or non-white people? i'm well aware of the stereotype but 100% of the time, seen it as a scrubby white guy in a hoodie.
- wincy 1mo agoI get a haircut and wear a suit when I interview but am wearing an oversized Star Wars t-shirt while working right now. It’s just putting in the right level of effort at the right time?
- simmerup 1mo agoIn my experience the worst dressed definitely have more self confidence about their ability, rightly or wrongly
- tgv 1mo agoIf everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable. The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.
- xxpor 1mo ago>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.
- estearum 1mo agoSame reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.
- mettamage 1mo ago> Lookism Pretty privilege
- maerF0x0 1mo agoHalo effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
- john_chungus1 1mo ago[dead]
- glimshe 1mo agoI wonder how GLP-1 treatment would affect men's employment. I think in the case of women, if there's an effect for appearance increasing employment opportunities, it's not surprising that losing weight would help too.
- kixiQu 1mo agoI am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.
- CuriouslyC 1mo agoMy experience is for men that it's not just white collar/blue collar, more it's appearance gives a halo that helps people progress in domains where there's a human, interpretive aspect to advancement. General contractors are rewarded for being attractive and fit, the plumber they contract to is rewarded for getting the work done on time/budget. Attractive men get promoted to prominent public facing and leadership roles more for this reason, while dumpy unattractive men tend to be stuck in (typically lower level) roles where competence is enough.
- john_chungus1 1mo ago[dead]
- diego_sandoval 1mo agoI think there are studies that analyze height vs. career achievement.
- pessimizer 1mo agoAlso baldness.
- kixiQu 1mo agoI think there's a lot of just-world fallacy going around re: how I keep running across the following pattern online now that GLP-1RA drugs exist. Commenter A (esp. often a woman, though of any age): I lost a lot of weight and people treat me radically better. I did not change my behavior in a way that explains this; it seems like stigma / prejudice. Commenter B: I have never met you but it is probably the case that stigma is not relevant and in fact you did somehow become more confident or otherwise start behaving differently in ways that mean your prior and current experiences of the world were somehow deserved. Which is kind of wild!
- nemomarx 1mo agoI'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- nukethebay 1mo ago[dead]
- twic 1mo agoMild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.
- throw-the-towel 1mo agoOTOH, these other effects could have been directly caused by weight loss. Being overweight isn't exactly healthy!
- Balooga 1mo ago
- srean 1mo agoOh! I thought this would be about migraine.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- codedokode 1mo agoIf looks are important for employment how then men find a job? Men are mostly unattractive even compared to not a perfect woman. In terms of looks and style, average man loses to an average woman. Or employers require only women to be attractive?
- luqtas 1mo agoyes! i still wondering why feminism had to be created /s
- bigyabai 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
- dgellow 1mo agoMaybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures
- derektank 1mo agoMen tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.
- kbelder 1mo agoJust go to a fast food place. There's a strong tendency to have guys in the back cooking, girls in the front at the register.
- monknomo 1mo agoyou know a pretty fair majority of men are working in white collar office work, which is directly comparable in terms of public facing and social careers? real loosely, something like 1/3, 40% are in these blue collar fields, and even in those fields there are enough sales and similar roles that prefer better appearances.
- stevefan1999 1mo agoSo uh, this is just trying to promote fat shaming and lookism using science as a judgement tool. How cool is that? /s
- pixel_popping 1mo agoAre you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".
- pessimizer 1mo agoYour reading comprehension is off.
- rayiner 1mo agoThe article has a bunch of speculation that’s not in the paper: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w35387.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353... One key point: > Nor do I find evidence of upward job mobility among incumbent workers. Already-employed women do not increase hours, income per household member, or job-to-job moves. If anything, employer changes decline, possibly due to a desire to retain access to health insurance that covers these drugs. These null effects help distinguish a new-match channel from a general productivity or well-being channel This complicates the idea that it’s just people treating lighter people better. It could well be that a lot of people who take GLP-1s are obese enough where it affects their ability to go out in the world and do stuff, and losing the weight enables people to work.
- WarmWash 1mo agoI also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.
- stephbook 1mo agoThe study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.
- altairprime 1mo ago> The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all. Unfairness found against one segment is not negated by studying only one segment, and “but” is a load-bearing word representing your entire one-word claim. Please explain in more words what argument you’re supporting with your two observations?
- sokoloff 1mo agoIf I read a medical paper that concluded and headlined that “cancer kills left-handed patients” but studied only left-handed patients, I might think the study was technically correct but still reasonably wonder if the left-handedness is relevant to the study’s results.
- ape4 1mo agoBut if everyone takes GLP-1 ... its a level playing field again
- hibikir 1mo agoIt just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.
- Balooga 1mo agoIt puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster. The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.
- PaulKeeble 1mo agoThose fat cells will be screaming for fat when empty. GLP-1s are a drug for life currently, we aren't treating them as such but we should because there is no avoiding the need to continue to quiet those fat cells down from their errant signalling to the brain.
- andriy_koval 1mo agoyou described the need to switch to healthy diet and exercise routine to maintain weight after finishing treatment..
- nemomarx 1mo ago
- johnsmith1840 1mo agoShocking news. Humans like attractive people.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- quadrifoliate 1mo agoThis has been the case for a long time, even with attributes that you have far less control over, such as your height [1]. Given typical social prejudices, I would not be surprised if the height effect was greater for men and the weight effect was greater for women. GLP-1 drugs seem to provide a (relatively) painless way to control the weight effect; the corresponding treatment for control of height [2] is much more painful, risky, and expensive. ------------------- [1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/height-surgery-limb-lengthening-men-health.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/height-surgery-limb-le...
- dnautics 1mo agoin an era when interviews are done by zoom, is there a height effect for men?
- treis 1mo agoDefinitely one of the most unexpected bits of WFH is to show up to an onsite and find out your coworker is 6'5".
- edaemon 1mo agoI know of a guy who, before attending in-person meetings for the first time with new people, sends the message "FYI, I am 7 feet tall." He's gotten enough weird looks or outright stunned people that he takes precautionary measures.
- Mountain_Skies 1mo agoPerhaps not in the early part of the hiring pipeline but unless the entire hiring process is remote (I've done this once so it's not impossible), sooner or later the full physical appearance is going to get judged. I did have a weird experience right before the pandemic where the CTO of our company, who had never met me in person before but we'd been on tons of Zoom calls, got visibly upset and even said he'd been tricked, because I was older than he thought. That wasn't a good sign for my future in the slice of the company. The irony here is that he was near retirement age and has since retired. Still, my professional headshot, which was at least a decade old, appears to have set expectations. Guess even on a video call people sometimes see what they expect to see and only during an in-person meeting do they have to confront reality.
- CyanLite2 1mo agoPretty privilege exists.
- modeless 1mo agoThe study compares people who actually started GLP-1 treatment to people who say they want to but didn't. It sure seems to me like people who say they want something but don't take action to get it would also be less likely to get jobs, independent of what the thing they want is.
- adolph 1mo agoThe original paper is quite readable and interesting in how the researcher works through a number of alternative hypotheses. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w35387.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353... An tangential part of the paper is partnered men: Among baseline partnered men (which is where partnership dissolution is well-defined), I find a 6.8pp increase in men leaving their baseline partners (s.e. 2.9), which rises to 12.1pp after 1.5+ years (s.e. 6.1). Unlike women, partnered men leave existing relationships with weight loss.
- throwaway2037 1mo agoDo you find this finding surprising? I do not.
- adolph 1mo agoI don't have a prior for this topic so yes, it is new information. The perhaps surprising part is the difference between men and women. The paper found that partnered men who take GLP-1 are more likely to exit partnership than women in a similar data context. I think a defendable no-priors null hypothesis would be that there is little to no difference. Here the data shows a difference.
- tester756 1mo agoWhy take drugs when you can take home-delivery diet? This is genuine question, I've started using them and they're one of the best things I've ever paid for. You get good food, at calculated sizes/calories/etc etc, you don't have to do shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc. It is insanely convenient and you can manage your weight easily without even any exercises (but they're still recommended tho)
- minimaltom 1mo agoUsually, chronically-overweight ppl have tried regulating weight with all kinds of diets, lifecycle interventions, regular exercise, etc, and a lot of the time the thing that actually worked was the GLP-1. I think this speaks a lot to the variance in metabolism, hunger, cravings etc across the population.
- asdff 1mo agoThe rub is that if they did a good job with those things, they would have worked. Most people cannot accurately account for calories and poorly estimate how hard they are actually working out.
- minimaltom 1mo agoI think this is a commonly-held misconception. Even when individuals accurately account for calories and workout intensity (using hard data, not feels), theres a large variance across individuals, broadly attributable to 'metabolics'.
- asdff 1mo agoWhile that is true there is variance it doesn't vary to the point of overcoming the basic thermodynamics at play. Facts are, you eat fewer calories, you lose weight. You burn more calories than previously without eating to make up the difference, you lose weight. There is no obese person that can starve themselves and not lose weight. It just doesn't work like that. The energy has to come from somewhere. What often happens when people say "it doesn't work for me" is that they think they are working hard in the gym but aren't actually, or they think they are eating healthy without realizing all the little snacks or drinks they consume are putting some thumbs on the scale.
- callmeal 1mo agoAnother point for "Pretty Privilege / Halo Effect"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_privilege
- sciencesama 1mo agovery unfortunate ! shows physical discrimination !!
- niemandhier 1mo agoI think people often tend to treat drastic deviations from standard appearance as an indicator for undesirable character traits. If you are badly groomed as a man, you tend to be perceived as careless. In my experience if you are obese, people think you lack will power and discipline. Changing how people view you for the better always has an influence on your personal success.
- ausbah 1mo agofirst sentence is one step from outright discrimination even if not everyone recognizes it. if you’re visibly transgender/queer, have noticeable accent, visible disability, and on and on and on
- throwaway2037 1mo ago> have noticeable accent It is weird that you picked this example. HN is dominated by folks working in technology. Depending upon where you work, a large minority of your co-workers probably have a "noticeable accent". Do you really think it still matters in 2026? I am forever trying to tell non-native English speakers who are concerned that their accent makes them sound dumb: For educated native English speakers, we don't care about your accent; we care about what you are saying.
- AuthAuth 1mo agoYes different accents carry different things subconsciously.
- throwaway2037 1mo agoCan you provide some specific examples that affect you or others around you?
- AuthAuth 1mo agoYeah. If I see a guy with a posh british accent im going to think subconciously that he is smarter than the guy with the scuffed british accent.
- andrewclunn 1mo agoMarket scarcity holds true. 40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world. Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare. I for one am glad for all the people now finding better employment opportunities, better health, and (anecdotally) better outlooks on life thanks to their weight loss. Awesome throughout.
- stephbook 1mo agoDiminishing returns though. Once everyone is on glp-1, noone gets an employment advantage from it anymore. I still recommend riding the wave as long as it works.
- throwaway2037 1mo ago> 40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world. Uh, what? Of my nine aunts (both sides), all of them have university degrees. None of them are particularly special (very high intelligence, nor from wealth families). Women have been going enmass to university since the mid-1960s. If you want to argue about it, first define what you mean by "rare".
- codedokode 1mo ago> Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare. For men, I assume?
- njx 1mo ago[flagged]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1mo ago1782491881 | GLP-1 drugs increase women's marriage and employment rates | https://hu-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rdiamond_fas_harvard_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=/personal/rdiamond_fas_harvard_edu/Documents/Combined_GLP1_Labor.pdf&parent=/personal/rdiamond_fas_harvard_edu/Documents&ga=1 https://hu-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rdiamond_fas_harvard_e... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48688670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48688670 1783008484 | GLP-1's help women find work, and men to leave their partners | https://www.ft.com/content/a7a9bfbf-9743-473b-897f-6a91ad3fa0a9 https://www.ft.com/content/a7a9bfbf-9743-473b-897f-6a91ad3fa... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48763588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48763588 1784040287 | GLP-1: no improvement in (mental) health, employment, and marriage [pdf] | https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35198/w35198.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35198/w351... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907726 1786017110 | The Labor Market Impacts of GLP-1s | https://www.nber.org/papers/w35475 https://www.nber.org/papers/w35475 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49195399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49195399
- ChrisArchitect 1mo agoStop spamming with these unwieldly lists. If there's no significant discussion, there's nothing.
- _superposition_ 1mo agoThis is just common sense and being honest about natural biases.
- flashman 1mo ago> "If it's going to make me more money to paint my face, clown me up," she said. Oh you're already a clown