IStock Photo 11021865 © PeskyMonkey

Everyone’s talking about Kathryn Bigelow, and rightly so; she’s achieved the height of Hollywood fame as the first woman ever to win an Oscar for Best Director. But Bigelow is unusual in another way: she’s nearly 6 feet tall. The odds a woman 40-49 is at least 5 feet 10 inches tall are 1 in 62.5, which means only 1.6% of women are that lofty (Bigelow is 49 years old as of this writing).

We generally think of tallness as a good thing, and research bears that out: statistically speaking, tall people are better educated, make more money, and are therefore often assessed as happier. Yet being notably taller than average can have its downside, especially for women.

Height matters so much to people that the majority of both men and women who use online dating sites lie about it ( 1 in 1.81 (55%) men, 1 in 1.95 (51%) women). Tall men benefit socially—there's a reason “short, dark, and handsome” never became a cliché. A forthcoming study from Duke University has found that to match the dating success of a man one inch taller, a 5'9" man would have to make $30,000 a year more.

But tall women sometimes regard their height as a social detriment. “I love and hate being tall at the same time,” a teenage girl who is exactly Bigelow's height writes on tallwomen.org. “The only two downsides are shopping and dating.” It’s true that men typically prefer dates who are shorter than they are, but some tall women enjoy the “standing out” factor, and many come to terms with their height once they get past the awkward years. On the same website, a 31-year-old 6-footer who used to cry about getting teased now finds herself “considered somewhat of a glamazon goddess.”

Taller men tend to be higher achievers. Malcolm Gladwell reported in his book Blink that CEOs of Fortune 500 companies averaged 6 feet tall, more than 2 inches higher than the national average for American men. This same select set of power brokers would rather be bald than short, according to an unscientific USA Today survey. Only two US Presidents have been below average in height.

Malcolm Gladwell didn't say anything about CEOs who might happen to be female. There aren’t many in the Fortune 500. But 2009 saw a record 15 on the list—1 in 33.33. Maybe now that Kathryn Bigelow has shown the way in Hollywood, someone will take a scientific look at the stature of high-achieving women as well, and we’ll be able to bemoan the odds against—if they are indeed against—shorter women becoming CEOs and presidents.