A new study from Rebecca Diamond, the Martin Feldstein Professor of Economics at Harvard University, has found women who lose weight by taking GLP-1 medications (such as Ozempic or Wegovy) are more likely to gain employment and/or get married than women who did not take such medication, suggesting there is a significant social stigma impacting how people view women who are obese.
For her study, Dr. Diamond compared the marriage and employment rates of women on GLP-1 drugs to a control group of women who wanted to take the drugs but had not yet started. Among single women, the likelihood of getting married or moving in with a partner increased by 28.6 percentage points after 1.5 years on GLP-1 medication. Among unemployed women, taking GLP-1 medication increased their likelihood of becoming employed by 26.9 percentage points after 1.5 years on the medication. Notably, Dr. Diamond found little change in women’s mental health and overall life satisfaction before and after starting GLP-1 medication. Additionally, women who were already married or employed before taking their new medication did not report significant changes to their marriage or employment.
Based on her analysis, Dr. Diamond theorizes that weight-loss from GLP-1 medication will have the largest impact in scenarios where women are the subject of other people’s first impressions.
“If everybody else is losing weight and getting jobs, maybe it’s extra stigmatizing to be an overweight person if you can’t afford these drugs,” said Dr. Diamond. “Depending on how the ‘new world’ shakes out, if weight is less related to drugs or to people’s negative association with it, maybe it’s not so bad. But I think it likely could make it much worse to be an overweight person in this world.”
Dr. Diamond joined the Harvard faculty in 2025, following more than a decade of teaching and conducting research at Stanford University in California. She holds bachelor’s degrees in physics, economics, and mathematics from Yale University and master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Harvard.