Running Faster to Stay in Place

December 20, 2006

Women have made great gains in education, managerial and professional jobs, and business ownership, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), a Washington, DC, think tank that tracks women's well-being. In its new report, The Best and Worst State Economies for Women (PDF), IWPR highlights that despite women's quick-paced progress in some areas, fair compensation continues to elude them.

"Women are always the bridesmaid, never the bride when it comes to earnings" says Dr. Heidi Hartmann, economist and IWPR president. "Women have come a long way, but are still waiting for equal pay. In fact, at the current rate of progress, equal pay will take another 50 years."

Between 1999 and 2005, 15 states saw a widening of the wage gap between women and men, ranging from a 0.2 percentage point increase in North Dakota to an 8.1 percentage point increase in Idaho. Another 16 states experienced small gains, achieving less narrowing of the gap than the nation as a whole (4.3 percent). Only twenty, fewer than half, the states narrowed the gap more than the nation as a whole (which narrowed the gap from 27.3 to 23.0 percent). Real (inflation-adjusted) median annual earnings of women also fell nationwide for the last three years for which data are available (2003, 2004, and 2005).

Nationwide, women who work full-time, year-round have median annual earnings of $31,800, only 77 percent of men's annual earnings of $41,300. Washington, DC, included with the 50 states in the study has the highest women's earnings and also the smallest pay gap. Women who live in the District of Columbia earn $42,400, 85.5 percent as much as men who live there. DC is the only jurisdiction where the level of women's median earnings is higher than the national median for men's earnings. For men 24 states have median earnings above the national median.

Despite a lag in wage parity, women are making gains in other areas related to employment and earnings. The proportion of women in managerial and professional occupations, for example, is on the rise, at 35.5 percent, up from 33.2 percent at the time of IWPR's last data release. The best states on this indicator are the District of Columbia (52.5 percent), Maryland (43.1 percent), Virginia (40.3 percent), Massachusetts (39.7 percent), and New Jersey (37.6 percent); the worst states are Idaho (27.1 percent), Tennessee (28.7 percent), Utah (28.8 percent), Arkansas (29.5 percent), and Nevada (29.6 percent).

The economic policy environments of the states were also examined in the study to assess women's economic progress. This area includes four factors highly influenced by policy and with great impact women's economic independence: percentage of women with a four-year college degree or more, women's poverty rates, health insurance, and women's business ownership.

Every state in the nation saw an increase in women's educational attainment between 2000 and 2005, ranging from 0.2 percent more women aged 25 and older with at least a Bachelor's degree in Wyoming to 8.5 percent more in the District of Columbia.

"The leaps and bounds women have taken in terms of higher education are something we can point to as a sign of true progress," remarked Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever, Director of Poverty, Education, and Social Justice Programs at IWPR. "Now the nation has got to make sure that educational gains translate into economic opportunity for women."

Slightly more than 87 percent of women in the United States live above the poverty line, but IWPR's report also finds that poverty is unevenly distributed among the states. Whereas, only 6.6 percent of New Hampshire women live in poverty, more than 18 percent of women in Louisiana live below the poverty line. Between 1999 and 2005, a higher share of women slipped into poverty in fifteen of the 50 states, despite a slight reduction (of 1.0 percent) in women's poverty nationwide.

The report also finds great disparities across states in women's health insurance coverage well, an indicator that often goes hand-in-hand with poverty. Whereas 91.0 percent of women in Minnesota, and 88.6 percent of women in Hawaii and Wisconsin have health insurance, only 70.8 percent of women in Texas and 73.2 percent of women Louisiana do.

In addition to examining women's employment and earnings and the economic policy environments in which they live, the study lays out the overall best and worst states for women economically in 2006.

IWPR ranked the best as the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Massachusetts, as the first, second, and third, followed by Minnesota (4th), Vermont (5th), Connecticut and New Jersey (6th), and Colorado (8th), for doing well on most of the indicators. The study gives honorable mention to Virginia, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Alaska for ranking well on some of the indicators.

The states with the worst economies for women are Arkansas (51st), Louisiana (50th), and West Virginia (49th), at the three bottom places, followed by Mississippi (48th), Kentucky (47th), Montana (46th), Tennessee (45th), and New Mexico (44th). Dishonorable mention went to Alabama, Idaho, Wyoming, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The report also recommends several public and private policies to improve the status of women throughout the United States.

The report was written by a team of researchers at IWPR, led by economist and MacArthur Fellow Dr. Heidi Hartmann, and was based on analysis of federal-government data sources. IWPR, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank, has analyzed state-by-state differences in women's well-being since 1996 and is the only source of state-by-state indicators of women's economic progress. Today's release marks the tenth anniversary of the series.