WV LISTED AMONG WORST STATES OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN

(03/06/2019)
In honor of March being 'National Women's History Month,' a website has conducted a study on the opportunities each U.S. state has for women to determine the best and worse states for women in 2019.

The personal-finance website WalletHub compared the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia across 24 key indicators of living standards for women to come up with a list titled "2019's Best & Worst States for Women."

Some of the data used to determine the rankings for this list include median earnings for female workers, unemployment rate for women, percentage of women-owned businesses, high school graduation rate for women, female homicide rate, female life expectancy and more.

These metrics were then put into two categories, 'Women's Economic & Social Well-Being Rank' and 'Women's Health & Safety Rank.' These two categories were then used to determine an overall rank of 1-51.

West Virginia found itself near the bottom of the list, placing 45th overall, or the 6th worst state for women in 2019.

The Mountain State ranked near the bottom in each of the two main categories, placing 42nd in the 'Women's Economic & Social Well-Being Rank' and 44th in the 'Women's Health & Safety Rank.'

The state has been ranked near the worst in comparing the wages of women vs. men.

West Virginia women are poor voters.

When looking at individual metrics, West Virginia placed 50th in share of women who voted in the 2016 Presidential election, 48th in women's life expectancy at birth and 45th in share of women in poverty. However, the Mountain State didn't place near the bottom of the rankings in every category, as it placed 24th in women's preventive heart care and 26th in quality of women's hospitals.