Discrimination based on body size is common and persistent in American workplaces — but it's largely left out of diversity and inclusion training, and overlooked in employment law.

Why it matters: There's an economic cost to not being thin.

"Weight stigma is present at every stage of the employment cycle," says Rebecca Puhl, a professor at the department of human development at the University of Connecticut. It's harder to get hired, promoted and paid.

• A Harvard study found that negative workplace attitudes about body size held steady from 2007 to 2020, even as biases on race and gender fell.
• Even companies that put focus and resources behind inclusivity say weight bias has not been on the radar, The Wall Street Journal reports.
• Half of managers said they preferred interacting with employees who are not overweight in surveys this year by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Stunning stat: For an obese woman, losing 65 pounds has roughly the same impact on her wages as getting a master's degree, The Economist's Alice Fulwood reports.

Between the lines: Weight discrimination affects women more than men, studies show.

• "We have very stringent ideals of female physical attractiveness and that idea is thinness," Puhl says. "And when women deviate even a little bit, they start to experience stigma."
• While both men and women experience discrimination when they reach BMI levels that are classified as obese, men who are overweight don't tend to earn less than their...

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