Women and Weight-Based Employment Discrimination
![handle is hein.journals/cardw13 and id is 637 raw text is: WOMEN AND WEIGHT-BASED EMPLOYMENT
DISCRIMINATION
ALEXANDRA W. GRIFFIN*
I. INTRODUCTION
It is often said that overweight people are the last group against which it is
acceptable to discriminate.1 Sixty percent of overweight women and forty percent
of overweight men describe themselves as having been discriminated against in the
course of employment.2 As this statistic suggests, weight-based discrimination
disproportionately affects women.
Weight-based discrimination is not a problem that only affects a few women.
Overweight women make up a large percentage of our population, as sixty-two
percent of women aged twenty to seventy-four are overweight, and about half of
those women are obese.3 These overweight women endure more discriminatory
conditions than overweight men.4 One recent study revealed that higher body mass
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, J.D., June 2007; University of Maryland, B.A. 2002. I wish to
thank Professor Edward Stein for lending his expertise to this endeavor. I also send my thanks to the
dedicated editors and staff of the Cardozo Journal of Law and Gender for their hard work all year.
I See Rebecca Puhl and Kelly D. Brownell, Bias, Discrimination and Obesity, 9 OBES RES. 788,
788 (2001) (It has been said that obese persons are the last acceptable targets of discrimination.); E.K.
Daufin, Hold the Slurs - Fat is Not a Four-Letter Word, L.A. TIMES, Mar. 4, 1990, at M7 (Where racist
jokes have become, for the most part, fashionable only for fascists, it is still considered OK to poke fun
at fat people.).
2 Kari Homer, A Growing Problem: Why the Federal Government Needs to Shoulder the Burden
in Protecting Workers from Weight Discrimination, 54 CATH. U. L. REV. 589, 591 (2005) (citing
Carolyn May McDermott, Should Employers Be Allowed to Weigh Obesity in Employment Decisions?
Cook v. Rhode Island Department of Mental Health, Retardation & Hospitals., 44 U. KAN. L. REV. 199
(1995)).
3 American Obesity Association Women and Obesity Fact Sheet,
http://www.obesity.org/subs/fastfacts/obesity-.women.shtml (last visited Jan. 30, 2007) (overweight and
obesity are defined using Body Mass Index (BMI), which is a number calculated from a person's weight
and height. Overweight is defined as a BMI of twenty-five or more and obese as a BMI of thirty or
more).
4 See, e.g., Homer, supra note 2, at 614-615 (More women than men are victims of weight
discrimination.); Dalton Conley and Rebecca Glauber, Gender, Body Mass and Socioeconomic Status:
Evidence from the PSID, ADVANCES IN HEALTH ECONOMICS AND HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Vol.
17, 253, 254 (2007) ([O]besity is associated with a 17.5 1% reduction in women's wages ... for men,
being obese or overweight does not come with any economic penalties.); American Obesity
Association Women and Obesity Fact Sheet, supra note 3, (Women with obesity appear to have much
more prejudice and discrimination directed against them than men with obesity.); Elizabeth E. Theran,
Free to Be Arbitrary and... Capricious; Weight-Based Discrimination and the Logic of American
Antidiscrimination Law, 11 CORNELL J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 113, 157-158 (2001) ([O]verweight women
suffer more employment-related discrimination and greater wage effects than do overweight men.).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cardw13&div=28&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Women and Weight-Based Employment Discrimination
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most