Where you live determines a lot—especially if you’re a woman. From physical and mental well-being to unemployment rates to median income, key components of life satisfaction in the U.S. vary drastically based on location. And given that the pay gap also worsens for women, in particular, as they age, the city they call home can be a huge factor in determining earnings and quality of life later on.
A new WalletHub study ranked 182 cities in the U.S. to find out which ones are best for women. The rankings are based on two factors: women’s economic and social well-being, which includes median earnings, unemployment rate, and job security; and women’s healthcare and safety, which looks at access to abortion, the quality of women’s hospitals, and suicide rates.
The top-ranked cities have higher annual wages when adjusting for cost of living; good healthcare; and low rates of poverty for women. The lowest-ranked cities have larger gaps in women’s healthcare and fewer opportunities for well-paying jobs.
First on the list is Columbia, Maryland, which has the highest median wage for women at $61,778 and a relatively low poverty rate of 8.2% (the eighth lowest in the U.S.). The unemployment rate for women is just over 4% and nearly a quarter (23%) of businesses are owned by women. While many cities in the study are struggling with women’s healthcare gaps, Columbia has the 10th-best life expectancy for birthing women in the U.S.
Seattle, which ranked second among the cities studied, has the seventh-highest percentage of women-owned businesses, and just 11% of women live below the poverty line. The median salary is $47,792 and only 3.5% of women are uninsured. The city has the 11th-highest life expectancy at birth for women, and crimes against women and suicide rates are comparatively low.
Overland Park, Kansas, is the third-best city for women. While its ranking for healthcare and safety was 58 out of 182, it scored second on economic and social well-being. With a strong economy, only 3.6% of women are unemployed in Overland Park, and it has the second-highest median income for women.
On the other end of the spectrum, a number of cities in the American South ranked poorly. Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Montgomery, Alabama; Gulfport, Mississippi; and Fort Smith, Arkansas, are all in the bottom 10. Ranking worst of all is Jackson, Mississippi, at 176 out of 182 for economic and social well-being and 175 for women’s healthcare and safety.
Analysts explained in their report that local policies are massively important in terms of whether women are able to thrive in a certain city. “Government officials need to look at how dismantling of DEI programs will greatly impact gender equity in the workforce and including access to institutional resources (STEM training, for example),” commented Cecilia Rio, an associate professor at Towson University in Maryland. “White women, in particular, benefited a great deal from the implementation of affirmative action in the past in order to open up professional and other traditional male occupations.”
Rio added, “It is ironic, for example, to hear Trump’s press secretary complain about ‘wokeness’ when the very policies that came from the social movements of the ’60s and ’70s knocked down the doors of discrimination and stubborn glass ceilings that kept women out of such prestigious careers to begin with.”
Find the full list of best and worst cities for women here.