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the sisterhood

Women Prevent Women Prettier Than Themselves From Getting Jobs

Over the summer, a brave if not entirely articulate or trustworthy young woman named Debralee Lorenzana attracted a lot of attention by standing up in her too tight skirt and proclaiming that she was fired from her job for being too good-looking. Now, a pair of social scientists from Israel appears to back her up. Of thousands of job applicants whose résumés contained a head shot (this is more common in Israel) they've written in a working paper, women with no picture were much more likely to be called in for an interview than the attractive women, they found. Why?


We explore a number of explanations and provide evidence that female jealousy of attractive women in the workplace is a primary reason for the punishment of attractive women.

Interesting theory. We would completely buy into it, if we didn't have a job ourselves.

Are Good Looking People More Employable? [via Economix/NYT]

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