Maine is 11th best state for working moms in WalletHub list
Maine was found to be the country's 11th best overall for working moms in a pre-Mother's Day ranking published by personal finance website WalletHub on Tuesday.
To determine the best and worst states for working moms, researchers compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia in terms of child care, professional opportunities and work-life balance, which were then further broken down into 16 sub-categories.
Of the three main categories, child care counted the most in calculating the state ranking.
Maine came in at No. 11 overall, sandwiched between Washington state (No. 10) and North Dakota (No. 12).
Interestingly, Maine had the third-highest ratio of female executives to male executives, just behind the District of Columbia and South Carolina.
But the Pine Tree State fared the worst among the six New England states on the overall list, with Massachusetts, Rhode, Island, Connecticut and Vermont coming in at No. 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively, and New Hampshire at No. 9. Louisiana was dead last at No. 51.
Blue states were also found to be more friendly to working moms than red states.
Though women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and more than 70% of moms with young children are working, women earned only 85% of what men made in 2018 and have far less upward mobility, the report's authors note in their introduction.
"Such obvious inequality," they write, "sparks debates about gender roles in a shifting socioeconomic environment. Workplace inequality brings up not just financial questions, but also deeply ingrained social issues. For instance, should women have to choose between career and family?"
They note that progress is happening at different rates across the nation, with parental leave policies as well as the quality of cost-effective day care and public schools varying widely by state.
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