The personal-finance website WalletHub just released its report 2019’s Best & Worst States for Women’s Equality

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Source:

2019’s Best & Worst States for Women’s Equality

https://wallethub.com/edu/best-and-worst-states-for-women-equality/5835/

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Colorado comes in at No. 8 in a ranking of gender equality in all 50 states that WalletHub released Tuesday.

The personal-finance website’s evaluation compared the differences between men and women using 17 metrics within three major categories: workplace environment, education/health, and political empowerment.

Colorado scored first for educational attainment and employment rate, ninth in entrepreneurship, 10th in earnings and 15th in political representation.

Internationally, the United States ranks 51st for equality among nations, and WalletHub noted the country has had a “disappointing performance” in closing the gender gap.

The country could do better at closing the gap by empowering female political candidates, increasing employer transparency regarding pay and hiring practices, and establish opportunities for women at educational institutions, said a panel of experts gathered by WalletHub.

Political representation is changing as evidenced by female candidates in national elections, noted Supriya Baily, associate professor at George Mason University in the WalletHub report, but there is still room for more women in local elections.

“The real power begins in local elections, where party and institutional support for female candidates can help diversify the candidates field,” Baily said.

In addition to employers being upfront about their workforce and hiring standards, companies need to take concrete steps to increase diversity, said Amy Bhatt, assistant professor at the University of Maryland. She noted a recent example of Salesforce’s CEO allocating millions of dollars to correct salary imbalances and appealing to his managers to hire more diverse candidates.

“Probably the biggest barrier to women’s promotion is the culture of companies that do have a strong gender imbalance,” Bhatt said. “It takes real change at the highest levels of corporations to ensure that they actually mean business when they want to promote and empower women into senior roles.”

The foundation of the issue might be societal expectations placed on women, said Ritch Calvin, associate professor at Stony Brook University.

“Little girls are socialized not to be rude and not to ask for too much; little boys are encouraged to be aggressive and ask for what they want,” Calvin said. “So, we do need to social girls and women to be able to ask for what they deserve.”

The experts generally agreed that simply instilling quotas to establish more women in powerful positions is not an effective solution, as it does not address the roots of the issues.

“What might be better is to think about how companies nurture leadership in female employees at various stages of their careers,” Baily said. “Sustained and lasting commitment to gender diversity can result in positive changes for a company, there really just has to be the will do it.”

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