Maine Among Top States Advancing Women’s Rights and Equality

Maine stood out in a recent women's rights report with an exceptional performance.

WalletHub, a personal finance website, published its annual report of the states with the best and worst records for women's rights. The Pine Tree State was listed as the 4th best state. Now that's a ranking to be proud of.

Maine is One of the Best States for Women's Equality

Maine came in with a score 68.84 out of 100. The scoring is based on three major categories: Workplace Environment, Education & Health, and Political Empowerment. Those categories were broken down into 17 subcategories, with all of them being compared by gender. The three primary categories were then weighted and combined, with the best score being a 100. You can read about WalletHub's methodology and see all of the metrics here.

Maine scored a modest 29th in education and health. This category includes factors such as disparities in gender-based doctor visitation and medical bills, as well as educational testing scores. Clearly, Maine still has some work to do in these areas.

However, the state performed much better in workplace environment, earning an impressive 6th-place ranking. This includes having the third-lowest pay gap in the nation—a great statistic to fall back on.

Where Maine truly shined was in political empowerment, coming in as the number 3 state in that category. That strong score helped push Maine to an overall ranking of 4th.

The political empowerment ranking comes as no surprise. Maine has a tremendous legacy of women in politics, including Margaret Chase Smith, Olympia Snowe, Janet Mills, and Susan Collins, just to name a few.

Number one on the list was Hawaii. The islands led the way, with all three of its category rankings finishing in the top 20. It was followed by Nevada and Maryland.

What New England States are the Best for Women's Rights?

New England showed mixed results behind Maine. Here's a look at where the region finished.

10. Vermont
14. Massachusetts
17. Connecticut
29. New Hampshire
38. Rhode Island

As for the worst? Well, that unfortunate award went to Utah, with a score of 29.93. That includes dead-last rankings in both education and healthcare, as well as workplace environment, plus a 28th-place ranking in political empowerment. That’s quite an impressive feat for the Beehive State.

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But back to the good news—great job, people of Maine! It’s nice to see that equality and care are still valued as important factors in creating a strong and thriving society.