Connecticut Is Nation's Third Best State For Working Moms

With Mother’s Day less than a week away, newly released data puts Connecticut amongst the nation’s best state for Working Moms, ranking third, just behind Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Nationwide, 73% of women with children under age 18 report having been in the labor force during 2022.

Ina strong showing by the New England states, also reaching the top 10 were Vermont, ranked #7 and Maine at #9.  New Hampshire was #15.  Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana were at the bottom of the rankings. 

The data, compiled by the financial services website Wallethub, compared the attractiveness of each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for a working mother based on 17 key metrics. Connecticut’s rankings include:

·  5th – Avg. Length of Woman’s Work Week (in Hours)

·  8th – Parental-Leave Policy Score

·  10th – % of Single-Mom Families in Poverty

·  12th – Gender Pay Gap (Women’s Earnings as % of Men’s)

·  22nd – Female Unemployment Rate

·  24th – Ratio of Female Executives to Male Executives

·  24th – Median Women’s Salary (Adjusted for Cost of Living)

The most difficult to balance “are those that actually require face-to-face interactions with someone – colleagues, clients, or customers. But as the pandemic showed, many more careers do not actually require this all the time, as previously assumed,” explained Lotte Bailyn, Professor Emeritus at MIT Sloan School of Management.  She adds that most of the recent changes in the workplace were “initiated to help women, turn out to also help men, who more and more also want to combine their work with meaningful involvement with family and community. Indeed, recent research has shown that men now have more work-family conflict than women.”

Working moms still face an uphill battle in the workplace, WalletHub points out, as their average hourly wage is only 82% of what men make, and only 8.2% of S&P 500 companies’ chief executives are women.