Mississippi Continues to Be a Pretty Terrible State for Women
It’s been a strange time for women. Maternal mortality in the US has actually increased. There are people in our government who refuse to enact a law for equal pay. Personhood is still a Thing. But where in the US do women face the most hardship? It looks like Mississippi and Utah are duking it out for the top spot.
24/7 Wall St., a financial news blog analyzed data regarding gender wage gap, poverty rate for women, women represented in state legislature and infant mortality rate, similar to what the Center for American Progress used in their 2013 “The State of Women in America report.” Dividing the many variables into three categories,economy, leadership, and health, issues like gender differences in earnings, the percent of children enrolled in state pre-kindergarten (and how much that state spends per child enrolled in pre-k), as well as insurance coverage and maternity leave policies.
24/7 Wall St., deemed Mississippi (already the worst state for LGBT rights) the worst state for women, given the fact that it has the the highest poverty rate for women at 26.6% and the highest infant mortality rate at 10.0 deaths per 1,000 births.
But technically Utah’s indexed value averaged from the different variables placed them as the worst state. Utah boasts almost the largest pay discrepancy between men and women. Less than a third of management positions are held by women. Women made up 16.3% of state legislators last year. But they did have a low infant mortality rate. Slightly better than Utah was Wyoming (the wage gap is 69 cents to the dollar), then Idaho.
24/7 Wall St. points out:
According to Ariane Hegewisch, study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women are discriminated not just in base pay, but also lack career opportunities available to men. “A lot of [the wage gap] is also promotions, recruitments, and networking,” Hegewisch said. Perceptions of performance can also be affected by gender, meaning “the more the pay is related to performance and bonuses, the bigger the wage gap.”
The top ten worst states for women according to 24/7 Wall St:
- Utah
- Wyoming
- Idaho
- Mississippi
- North Dakota
- Montana
- South Dakota
- Indiana
- Alabama
- Kansas
Image via Getty.