Here Are the Least Sucky Cities for Women in the Workforce

The pay gap between male and female workers in the U.S., though it decreased briefly in 2011 with women making a whopping 82.2 percent of what men earned (thanks, dudes! Extra shopping ca$h, amirite?), widened again in 2012, most likely because The Recession but also because Old Dudes Don’t Want Us Making Money. In 2012, women earned 80.9 percent of of what men earned. But here’s the flip side to the shitty problem that should have been solved, like, forever ago: A bunch of cities have ALMOST equal pay for women. Yipee!

Nerd Wallet calculated the best places for working women using median earnings for full-time female workers and their earnings as a percentage of men’s earnings. The list is separated into the best small, medium, and large cities, with the city’s growth rate factored into the ranking.

The best “big” city for working ladies is the Washington, D.C. Metro Area, with a median earning of $55,688, although D.C. women’s earnings is still at 81.9% of men. Other cities with high median earnings include San Francisco (those Haight-Ashbury hippies finally paid off for something), San Jose, New York City, and Sacramento. Los Angeles comes in first for closing the pay gap with women’s earnings at 91.7% of men’s, followed by New York City and Dallas.

As for small and medium-sized cities, an overwhelming amount of cities that are closing in on the gender gap are college towns. Auburn, Charlottesville, Durham-Chapel Hill, Madison, and Oxnard close on the gender gap well above the national level, because institutes of haiyer edjoocashun seem to make people less sexist. (Although, the percentage of senior, tenured administrators at said institutions is still male-dominated). California has the most cities in each category, adding yet another reason on the list of why the rest of America to be jealous of the home of In-N-Out.

Still, though this data is encouraging in that it indicates a lot of growing cities are hosting less and less sexist industries, only one city was (over) 100 percent equal in terms of women’s earnings as percentage of their penis-wielding counterparts: Madera-Chowchilla, CA. Interestingly, that city is the home to the Central California Women’s Facility, which houses California’s death row for women. You win some you lose some, I guess. Side note: here is that prison’s Yelp page, because making Yelp pages for prisons are a thing.

[Nerd Wallet]

Annotate cities that are closing in on the gender gap on the map above! It’s fun and easy!