Posted by: John S Kiernan

Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce, and more than 70 percent of moms with young children are working. Yet women earned only 82 percent of what men made in 2017 and have far less upward mobility, as evidenced by the fact that only 5.2 percent of S&P 500 companies’ chief executives are female.

Such obvious inequality sparks debates about gender roles in a shifting socioeconomic environment. Workplace inequality brings up not just financial questions but also deeply ingrained social issues. For instance, should women have to choose between career and family?

The real question, however, is what we’re doing about this fundamental problem. Progress appears to be taking shape at different rates across the nation. Not only do parental leave policies and other legal support systems vary by state, but the quality of infrastructure — from cost-effective day care to public schools — is also far from uniform as well.

So, in order to help ease the burden on an underappreciated segment of the population, WalletHub compared state dynamics across 15 key metrics to identify the Best & Worst States for Working Moms. A complete breakdown of our findings, as well as expert commentary and a detailed methodology, can be found below.

1. Main Findings
2. Red States vs. Blue States
3. Ask the Experts: Improving the Plight of Working Moms
4. Methodology

Main Findings

Embed on your website<iframe src="//d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/embed/3565/geochart-moms.html" width="556" height="347" frameBorder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="width:556px;font-size:12px;color:#888;">Source: <a href="https://ift.tt/2KG9Vaw>  

Best and Worst States for Working Moms

Overall Rank (1=Best)	State	Total Score	‘Child Care’ Rank	‘Professional Opportunities’ Rank	‘Work-Life Balance’ Rank
1	Vermont	64.79	3	1	5
2	Minnesota	61.93	1	4	9
3	Massachusetts	58.29	2	16	14
4	District of Columbia	57.80	9	2	8
5	Connecticut	57.56	4	46	3
6	Rhode Island	57.40	19	24	1
7	Maine	54.00	14	6	10
8	New Jersey	53.56	7	36	13
9	Delaware	52.96	5	5	35
10	New York	51.95	26	17	7
11	North Dakota	51.07	8	21	22
12	Oregon	51.01	43	10	4
13	California	50.73	47	19	2
14	Wisconsin	50.59	12	35	16
15	Indiana	49.37	10	14	31
16	Montana	48.74	33	13	12
17	Colorado	48.59	22	9	21
18	Illinois	48.03	13	39	17
19	New Hampshire	47.81	6	42	33
20	Kansas	46.79	18	26	23
21	Iowa	46.78	16	37	19
22	Nebraska	46.58	34	11	18
23	Washington	46.11	27	40	15
24	Hawaii	45.02	39	30	11
25	North Carolina	44.83	17	22	38
26	Florida	44.59	20	7	42
27	Kentucky	44.45	25	15	36
28	Utah	44.15	30	51	6
29	Maryland	44.13	21	3	50
30	Virginia	44.11	11	28	47
31	Ohio	43.72	24	38	26
32	Tennessee	42.60	23	33	37
33	Oklahoma	41.61	15	43	40
34	South Dakota	40.99	41	20	32
35	Arizona	40.46	35	8	46
36	Michigan	40.37	36	32	34
37	New Mexico	40.36	46	12	29
38	Missouri	40.27	31	27	41
39	Pennsylvania	39.72	28	44	39
40	Arkansas	39.68	44	23	25
41	Alaska	39.42	45	25	27
42	Texas	39.14	29	31	49
43	Wyoming	38.75	37	47	28
44	Georgia	38.40	32	18	51
45	West Virginia	37.49	48	34	30
46	Mississippi	35.49	40	41	45
47	South Carolina	34.71	38	45	44
48	Nevada	33.94	49	29	48
49	Alabama	32.12	42	50	43
50	Louisiana	31.74	50	49	24
51	Idaho	31.04	51	48	20

Red States vs. Blue States Ask the Experts: Improving the Plight of Working Moms

For added insight into how to address workplace gender inequality, especially for working mothers, we turned to a panel of experts. They range from university professors who research gender roles and economics to the authors of some of the most popular career and women’s blogs. Click on the experts’ profiles to read their bios and responses to the following key questions:

1. What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?
2. What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? What are the easiest?
3. What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?
4. How likely are Ivanka Trump’s policies related to child care and paid family leave to be enacted?
5. In evaluating the best states for working moms, what are the top five indicators?

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• Jacqueline Ellis Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University
• Maura J. Mills Assistant Professor of Management in The Culverhouse College of Commerce at The University of Alabama
• Roya Ayman Professor of Psychology and Director of the Industrial and Organizational Psychology Program at Illinois Institute of Technology
• Kristin Backhaus Dean of the School of Business at the State University of New York at New Paltz
• Marjorie Jolles Director of Honors Program and Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Roosevelt University
• Peggy Stockdale Industrial and Organizational Psychologist, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
• Dev Dalal Assistant Professor at the University at Albany - State University of New York
• Jean Phillips Associate Professor of Labor & Employment Relations, Sociology, and Women's Studies in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Pennsylvania State University
• Sarah Damaske Associate Professor of Labor & Employment Relations, Sociology, and Women's Studies in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Pennsylvania State University
• Rosanna Hertz Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College
• Catherine R. Squires Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota
• Elizabeth F. Chapman Associate Professor of Management, Stetson School of Business and Economics, Mercer University
• Stacey N. Doan Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children, Claremont McKenna College
• Leanne Tortez Adjunct Professor, William James College

Jacqueline Ellis Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

Companies could ensure a living wage, health benefits, subsidized child care, paid family leave for parents and caregivers, flexible work schedules, and a guarantee that employees' seniority and pension benefits wouldn't be lost after taking family leave. These are basic provisions that take account of family responsibilities. Such changes require a systemic, cultural shift in thinking. Historically, workplaces have been structured around a very "masculine" career model -- assumptions about employment conditions and career tracks that are made around what has been a male trajectory; employers have assumed that an employee has a wife who will take care of domestic responsibilities -- child care, especially. In this culture, women often have to make a choice between motherhood and career. In the same way, parents and caregivers of either gender have to conform to this out-of-date culture making it challenging for dads to take paternity leave as well, or for single parents to take any kind of leave.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

When we read in the media about the challenges facing working mothers, in particular, we tend to hear stories from women in high-status, highly-paid professions rather than women (or men) working in lower-paid or service industry jobs. The jobs that don't pay a living wage make it incredibly difficult to balance work and family responsibilities. I'm not sure that there are any careers that make it "easy" to balance work and family, given the absence of consistent, accessible family-friendly policies at a government level.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Enact a living wage, provide universal free pre-K (at the very least) and paid parental leave for mothers and fathers and for parents of biological and adopted children.

How likely is it that Ivanka Trump's policies related to child care and paid family leave will be enacted?

My understanding is that the plan hinges on child tax credit that would benefit some but does nothing to enact the kind of systemic change that's necessary to support working families.

In evaluating the best states for working moms, what are the top five indicators?

• Living wage laws;
• Paid family leave for parents of biological and adopted children;
• Subsidized daycare or free universal pre-K;
• Availability of companies with family-friendly work conditions;
• Affordable health care.

Maura J. Mills Assistant Professor of Management in The Culverhouse College of Commerce at The University of Alabama

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

The most obvious ways that companies can support working parents include offering paid parental leave, allowing for schedule flexibility when possible, and offering lactation support (space, time) for mothers. The best family-friendly companies, however, go further, providing additional support in the form of child care assistance (ranging from on-site child care facilities to child care grants to emergency child care availability) and accommodations, such as breastmilk shipment, if a parent's job requires travel.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

Although there is a lot of individual variation across and even within careers, in general, roles demanding high travel and with long and rigid work hour demands are the most challenging for work-family balance. On the flip side, roles that allow for schedule flexibility or creative child care management (e.g., the option to bring a sick child to work in an emergency) generally provide more opportunity to effectively manage the demands of both work and home domains.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Nationally, the U.S. is currently one of the worst countries in terms of supporting working parents. State and local governments can rise above this, however, by improving government work-family support at these more micro levels. This starts with the most obvious: paid maternity leaves. California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and most recently New York are among the states at the helm in this regard. Paternity leave should also be on the docket, facilitating more equalized parenting options right from the start, as should laws requiring employers to enable breastfeeding mothers to express milk (pump) during the workday (some laws already exist requiring certain time and space allowances for some employees, but these laws could and should be strengthened, as well as applied more widely).

Roya Ayman Professor of Psychology and Director of the Industrial and Organizational Psychology Program at Illinois Institute of Technology

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

They can provide cafeteria-style benefits so employees can choose those that best fit them, and ensure that the benefits are fair. Also, allow for individual employees to have flexibility within reason to choose the time for their work. It can be flextime, short week-longer days -- all these alternative work arrangements are available to HR of companies.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

I think most careers can have some balance or management of work-family conflict. But at times, the employee needs to make some choices which may affect the speed of career advancement. Any career which is amenable to flexible work schedule or to telecommuting is easier to manage. Highly intense client interaction may be more difficult to manage.

How likely is it that Ivanka Trump's policies related to child care and paid family leave will be enacted?

I am not sure about Ivanka Trump's policies. But the extent to which everyone is supportive of the need for attention to family, and that the responsibility of raising children and managing the family is both on the shoulder of men and women, the more there is a chance for these policies to be enacted. The enactment happens at the manager and supervisor level, really.

In evaluating the best states for working moms, what are the top five indicators?

Factors that make a place more agreeable to moms are those with flexibility and that allow moms the choice for the best work schedule for them. Companies which are supportive and understanding of parents and have concierge services for child care or other needs of the family, such as pick-up and drop-off of dry-cleaning, grocery delivery, etc.

Kristin Backhaus Dean of the School of Business at the State University of New York at New Paltz

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

Scheduling predictability is one simple way for employers to help working families balance home and work life. When you know when you will be needed at work, you have the ability to make plans for child care, medical appointments and all of our other life. Further, scheduling predictability makes it easier for workers to make short- and long-term financial plans. It is difficult and stressful to create a budget when you can't predict the number of hours you will work, or the income you will bring home. Similarly, companies can create a workplace culture that places limits on how much "off-the-clock" work is expected from employees. Breaking the constant connection to work through email and text can allow workers to destress and be present for their families while they are home. A recently enacted law in France requires companies to establish hours when staff should not be emailing. While this level of legislation is unlikely in the United States, there are U.S. companies voluntarily enacting such policies.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Both working mothers and fathers need the support of state and local governments, and it is important to look at this as the needs of "families" rather than mothers. Governments have a significant role to play in the regulation and support of licensed child care centers. Incentives and subsidies offered by municipalities and states can help foster growth in this area, enabling families to maintain their employment. These programs can not only empower working families, but serve as economic stimuli.

Marjorie Jolles Director of Honors Program and Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Roosevelt University

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

Implementing flexible schedules for workers is often touted as one of the best investments a company can make in supporting and retaining the work of working parents. The 9-5 structure is somewhat artificial, designed around an assumption that workers do not have many parenting responsibilities other than earning a paycheck. With so many parents in the paid workforce now, that is no longer sustainable.

A major obstacle to making workplaces more conducive to working parents is the fact that for so much of our history, workplaces have been organized around men's needs and men's schedules, which themselves were organized around a certain domestic structure in which women were primarily responsible for much of the daily labor of raising children. So the culture of work didn't take women's needs into account, understandably. It is no longer economically possible for a family to survive on one parent's income (and the number of 2-parent households is shrinking, anyway), so there needs to be a deeper understanding that parenting (and care-taking more generally, including caring for aging parents) responsibilities are a persistent fact of most workers' lives. Companies should acknowledge this head-on and work harder to retain their talented labor force -- so many of whom are parents -- with creative approaches to employees' time management, a different understanding of "productivity" that moves away from a strict 9-5 understanding. So far, flexibility has mostly been a luxury of those at the top of the labor force, while harsh inflexibility remains the norm for masses of workers.

Of course, flexible schedules have their darker sides. The more we are expected to work remotely and at all hours, the harder it can be to implement limits and work can creep into other areas of life formerly protected as time off. So it's not a cure-all, but it is a step in responding to the parenting realities of workers.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Small tax deductions for individual parents aren't enough. A greater public investment in parenting -- that is, greater investments in childcare, public education, libraries, community centres, and healthcare -- will help working parents succeed in paid work. Achieving this will only happen if societies understand and value the contribution that parenting is to those societies (what scholars sometimes call "social reproduction"). Parenting tends to be thought of as only a private endeavor, something individuals do outside of state and economic structures and under the privacy of their own roofs. We know this is simply not accurate: the private sphere is closely shaped and dependent on the public sphere, and vice-versa. A culture change is necessary to change the perception of parenting as entirely private and separate from the state. If there were a greater understanding and value of the fact that parents are raising the next generation of consumers, soldiers, teachers, leaders, innovators (and, importantly, our future caretakers!), then perhaps significant state investment in parenting would appear logical and become possible. I'm not talking about a "nanny-state" (a derogatory term that reveals how much our culture denigrates women and their work), but a basic understanding that parenting is itself an investment in the future of the human race, and all investments need nourishing if they are to pay off.

Peggy Stockdale Industrial and Organizational Psychologist, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

There is a strong business case for companies to institute policies and practices and to develop a culture of support for work/life balance. Companies that embrace work/family balance significantly reduce stress and increase job satisfaction and employee loyalty. Turnover savings alone is likely to pay for the cost of these programs. A company's reputation for work/life balance also strongly affects their ability to recruit, attract and retain high quality employees. This is particularly important for companies with an earnest and strategic ambition to increase the diversity of their workforce. Companies with a strong reputation for their culture and practices of work/life balance win highly coveted awards and recognition, such as Working Women's 100 Best Place to Work for Women, the Catalyst Award, Fortune's 100 Best Places to Work, Fortunes 50 Best Workplaces for Parents, and the DiversityInc Award. These awards, which require extensive data, employee survey results and often onsite visits by external reviewers, bring national attention to top 100 companies helping them compete for the best and brightest talent. Finally, there is evidence that publicly traded companies that earn "Top 100" distinction (the study examined Working Mother top 100 companies) earn higher stock returns than well-respected index funds, such as the S&P 500 and Russell 3000.

What do these award-winning companies do? First, they have a commitment from top management to make work/life balance a priority and they back this up with training and accountability. It is not sufficient for a company to espouse flexibility and work/family support, they need to make sure that the managers and supervisors who approve the use of these benefits are fully on board as well. Second, a company that takes work/life balance seriously also tends to have a strong commitment to advancing women. The companies that made the top 100 Working Mother list in 2017 had, on average, 40% managers and executives who were women. These companies were also likely to have a higher proportion of women participate in career counseling programs, and often had leadership training programs for women and mentoring programs.

Specific work/life balance policies and programs are often divided into three buckets: parental leave policies, family support policies, and flexible work arrangements. The most progressive parental leave policies are those that provide paid leave for several weeks after the birth or adoption of a child for both mothers and fathers. Among the Working Mothers top 100 list in 2017, the average number of paid parental leave was 10 weeks and ranged as high as 26. Family support policies include childcare/eldercare assistance, such as on-site day care, daycare locater services and, more progressively, back-up child/elder care or subsidies for backup child/elder care services. Other forms of assistance include tax-deferred dependent care savings accounts and informational resources that might help caregivers locate resources they need or desire to manage work/life demands. Flexible work arrangements are those that allow employees to work different schedules other than a standard 5-day full-day or from different places such as part-time work, flexible start and stop times, compressed work weeks, job sharing, and flexplace (e.g., telecommuting) arrangements.

Beyond policies and programs however, probably the most critical factor is feeling supported by your supervisor and coworkers. When an employee asks for parental leave or a flexible work arrangement, it is critical for the supervisor to support this request and not hold it against them, or worse, hold them back from advancing in their careers. Often work/life balance comes down to day-to-day forms of informal support, such as being able to leave early from work because a child is sick, the ability to work from home on occasion, and receiving emotional support from supervisors and coworkers for managing the occasional meltdown when work and non-work demands collide. A recent study in my lab found that supervisors' support for flexible work arrangements helped to catalyze employees' perceptions that the organization as a whole was supportive, which in turn increased their ability to use the company's work/life balance programs without fear of retribution.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

There are features of both careers and organizations that make work/life balance more or less easy. The jobs that are easiest to balance work and family are those that have relaxed schedule demands, such as contract workers who can decide what work they want to do and when. Teachers have little autonomy during the school year about their work schedules, but have more autonomy during summer breaks. Knowledge-workers may be able to work remotely more easily than those requiring physical presence, such as service workers (with some exceptions) and manual laborers. Smaller organizations, not-for-profit and public organizations may not have the resources needed to implement some forms of work/life balance such as extended paid parental leave and back up child/elder care assistance.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

State and local government can provide tax incentives to organizations located in their districts who provide (and fully support) paid parental leave and other comprehensive work/life balance programs. Because of the return on investment of these programs on the ability to attract and retain a high quality workforce, states and municipalities, benefit in terms of increased population growth with a concomitant increase in their tax base. These entities can also provide the infrastructure needed to make work-from-home arrangements more seamless, such as providing broadband internet throughout the state -- particular to rural areas that are traditionally underserved, but often desirable places to live.

How likely is it that Ivanka Trump's policies related to child care and paid family leave will be enacted?

This plan to have workers borrow from their social security and then work longer is untenable and is a form of a regressive tax. I'm not sure how likely such a plan will be enacted.

Dev Dalal Assistant Professor at the University at Albany - State University of New York

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

A good portion of the research in this area has suggested that two of the more popular policies for mitigating home and work imbalances are flexible work schedules and on-site child care. Flexible work schedules can take the form of flextime or compressed work weeks. Whereas flextime gives employees control of their start and end times so long as they complete their normal workday hours, compressed work weeks allow employees to work more hours a day but fewer days a week (i.e, working four, 10 hour days). Although providing these services is helpful, organizations also need to encourage their employees to make use of these programs. Having said that, given the various sources of conflict between home-life and work-life, it is difficult to say what companies can do to help parents balance the demands of these two areas of their lives. Organizations interested in helping their employees balance their home and work life will want to get information about what specific aspects of each area tend to cause conflict. With that information in hand, organizations can target the issues specific to their workforces.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

There is no one career for which balancing work and family is harder or easier; people experience their jobs and organizations differently. Two individuals in the same career -- say a lawyer -- can have vastly different experiences with their home and work life given their specific specialization in the career (i.e., corporate acquisitions versus real estate law), and the specific place of employment (i.e. large, multinational firm versus government agency). So, rather than discussing what careers are better or worse for balancing work and family lives, it's more reasonable to ask what features of the job and/or organization for which someone works can promote good work-family balance. Individuals are likely to experience good work-life balance if they work in a job/for an organization that promotes flexible scheduling including flextime, but also the opportunity to work from home if needed. In addition, jobs that allow workers to disengage from their work when they are home will promote good work-family balance. If a job is one in which the employee is expected to always "be on call," this employee will likely experience little detachment from work, and their family-life with suffer. Worsening this latter issue is the fact that not only can work issues cross over to one's home life, but the work issues of one family member can negatively impact the other family members.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Albeit just one example, a common source of work-family conflict for working mothers is child care. As such, policies that support assistance for child care can decrease family and work conflict. This does not mean simply providing or subsidizing child care services; this could also includes policies or programs to assist parents with getting their children to and from child care. Similarly, for multi-parent households, policies that provide opportunities for both parents to share in child care responsibilities would reduce the burden on working mothers alone -- for example, longer paternity leave. This could also include expanding the definition of a "family" to include other types of family structures, such as domestic partnerships and more than just a nuclear family. This would allow an expansion of who would be eligible for existing family-based policies (e.g., FMLA).

Jean Phillips Associate Professor of Labor & Employment Relations, Sociology, and Women's Studies in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Pennsylvania State University

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

In addition to having policies enabling flexibility that allow employees to better meet the demands of their non-work lives, employers must also have a culture that supports the active use of these policies. If an organization allows flextime, for example, but a supervisor discourages it then that supervisor's employees are less likely to utilize flextime. In one instance of which I am aware, a law firm offered paternity leave but no male employees took it because they felt that doing so would hurt their careers and steer them off of the partner track. Seeing higher-level employees openly utilize work-family friendly programs and having supervisors inform employees of the organization's work-family friendly policies and encourage them to utilize them helps send a message that work-family balance is something the employer genuinely supports.

Sarah Damaske Associate Professor of Labor & Employment Relations, Sociology, and Women's Studies in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Pennsylvania State University

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

One of the biggest things that companies could do to help working parents is to provide more schedule control -- this is a bit different than flexibility. One of the problems with flexibility is that it can be that companies are asking you to be flexible for them -- rather than them being flexible for the worker. Schedule control gives more of the control of scheduling over to the worker. There are a number of studies that have shown that this benefits both the worker and the employer.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

Surprisingly, female-dominated jobs are often the least flexible. Jobs with greater flexibility are often those dominated by men -- partly because men are more likely to be found at the top of the employment ladder, where they have more of an ability to control their own schedules.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Many state and local governments have already started to take important steps in enacting paid family and medical leave and also in mandating a minimum number of paid sick days for workers. Both of these trends are exceptionally important and very positive. It would be great to see these policies spread across the country. The initial studies done on the states and localities where these laws have been passed have shown widespread support both among workers and employers. Many employers who had originally expected that the laws would be problematic have ended up supporting them. About 40% of American workers don't have access to a single paid sick leave -- and these are primarily workers in the service sector of our economy, working in restaurants, daycares, hospitals, and nursing homes. In other words, these are precisely the types of jobs where we do not want people to come to work sick and risk spreading their illness. Dealing with the lack of paid sick days is an urgent concern for American citizens.

How likely is it that Ivanka Trump's policies related to child care and paid family leave will be enacted?

I am not a policy predictor, so I can't comment on the likelihood that the policies will be passed. I have, however, written a little about these policies for Harvard Business Review. Below is an excerpt of that text: "While Mr. Trump has made much of his plans, created with daughter Ivanka Trump, to expand the childcare tax credit, these changes are likely to benefit wealthier and married families instead of single mothers and their children. A better plan would be to do as the Center for Equitable Growth suggests and expand the Child Tax Credit so that more low-income families are eligible to receive the entire value of $2,000 for each child. Doing so would allow more mothers to be full-time workers who could better support themselves and their children."

Instead, I have suggested an alternative: "Instead, what is needed is to expand and reform sensible existing tax policies that would benefit single mothers. In 2015, the Earned Income Tax Credit kept 3.3 million children out of poverty and decreased the severity of poverty for another 7.7 million children. The EITC has also been shown to be good for our economy, as workers put most of the money back into the economy, buying necessary goods and household items. Yet only 80% of eligible tax-payers claim the EITC, so one positive step the new administration could take would be to increase the number of those participating in the program.[...] The full $2,000 credit may not seem like a lot of money at a time when the cost of daycare for upper middle-class families can come close to college tuition according to sociologist Joya Misra. But [working-class families] are unlikely to use expensive formal care options -- they are much more likely to rely on informal care, paying friends, kin, or in-home daycare operators. A 2009 report by Joan Williams and Heather Boushey found that, on average, low and middle income families paid between $2,300 to $3,500 annually. For these families, expanding access to the full value of the Child Tax Credit would make a real difference."

Here's the full article.

In evaluating the best states for working moms, what are the top five indicators?

I would look at:

1. The gender wage gap in the state (the Institute for Women's Policy Research has this information).
2. The average cost of childcare for the state.
3. The average availability of childcare for the state (it's not enough to be affordable -- it needs to be available).
4. Whether the state has enacted a paid version of FMLA (or uses the state TDI to provide temporary paid leave).
5. The percentage of employed women of working age in that state.

Rosanna Hertz Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

I think that the usual list still does not exist in the vast majority of work places: flexible schedules and working from home or in a satellite location, paid time off for not only to care for children and spouses but also others who might live with you or for whom you feel obligation (such as an aunt, a friend, a cousin). Also, childcare is extremely costly and while onsite daycare is rarely available companies could help families with these costs.

But mostly these policies focus on particular age groups -- what about the new grandmother? She does not get a grandmother leave nor does the grandfather? Why not acknowledge that they are care givers also?

What about eldercare costs for the "sandwich generation" who are trying to "balance" their young children while caring for aging parents. This would certainly help them. Again, another reason for flexible hours.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

All careers are difficult to balance work and family. Those careers that are easiest have mother's hours (8:30-2:30) which is rare. I suppose that I think of school personnel (teachers, librarians, specialists) as having these hours.

Besides the school setting I think the real issue is not necessarily the career but where it is practiced. Take law. If someone is a corporate lawyer they work long hours set by their organization but someone could also practice law in another setting where they would not have the same hours.

If I had to pick careers where it is most difficult to balance I would have to say medicine, finance sector, and high tech where personal balance is not part of anyone's vocabulary.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

1. Subsize daycare or offer free daycare.
2. Offer paid parental leaves and longer parental leaves -- at least 6 months. And understand that as more women become single mothers they will not have the help of another pair of hands.
3. Offer assistance with eldercare.
4. Local governments could set up hotlines to help families find daycare slots and also eldercare programs.

How likely is it that Ivanka Trump's policies related to child care and paid family leave will be enacted?

1. Trump recommends 6 weeks of paid maternity leave, tax deductions for stay-at-home parents and dependent care saving accounts.

As much as her plan is a departure from the typical republican platform on families so far nothing has been done. I am happy to hear that we are discussing paid parental leave since we all know that we remain the only Western country (and one of the only countries in the world without such a policy). I don't think the government will offer paid parental leaves at the Federal leave. In the US we tend to think about policies connected with families as Benefits NOT RIGHTS. We all need to discuss our right to a paid parental leave.

The usual conversation is that there is no Federal Money for paid leaves.

It will remain at the discretion of individual work places to provide paid parental leaves and this is really how a neoliberal government works.

Tax issue and daycare: I like that you can save up to $5,000 in pretax dollars in a dependent care FSA. It is something for people who have patience to attend to these details but when the cost of daycare averages $24,000 per child in the Northeast it is hardly enough.

Catherine R. Squires Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

I think two of the most important elements are: (1) supportive family leave policies; and (2) access to high quality childcare. We are so far behind other developed nations in both of these areas. Governments and businesses need to invest and create policies that allow parents to recover from childbirth and get their footing as new parents. Parents cannot thrive in the workplace if they are bogged down by the stress of recovering from childbirth and finding solid daycare options. As a society we need to value early childhood care professionals and pay them what they are worth. It is no surprise that we are facing a shortage in teachers and early childhood experts-they get paid so little. This is a travesty: all of the research demonstrates how important it is for children to be in nurturing spaces as their brains develop, and to have access to diverse visual and linguistic resources. Yet we spend so little on early childhood services, and many communities face a deficit in childcare centers. We can't keep pretending that families have the resources to keep one parent at home until kindergarten begins, or that every family has a trusted grandparent or neighbor nearby to assist with childcare. We have to start learning from those nations that have figured it out: investments in parent and child wellness matters.

Elizabeth F. Chapman Associate Professor of Management, Stetson School of Business and Economics, Mercer University

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

Work-life balance has to be part of the overall company culture. There is a great desire for everyone, not just parents, to have a balance between personal and professional life. Working parents do not want to feel they are being given lenience or special treatment, which could result in feelings of resentment from employees who are not parents. Instead, they desire to be part of a company that offers flexible work schedules (flextime, telecommuting, compressed work week) to all applicable employees, allowing everyone to tend to personal needs while maintaining a professional career. Additionally, when the focus is on results rather than number of hours "clocked in", people can work during their most productive time. Being physically present in the office does not guarantee productivity. In fact, many studies indicate that individuals who telecommute are often more productive than their in-office counterpart. The ability to work remotely is perceived as a perk to those who do it, and they do not want to lose it, so they tend to be particularly conscientious of their work. Of course, not all jobs are conducive to remote work and employees benefit from the socialization with coworkers; however, technology today allows greater opportunity for flexible work schedules to some extent in most jobs.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

Given our ever-changing technological capabilities, many jobs can be done outside of the traditional office. Of course, jobs that require frequent face-to-face interactions with customers are more constrained in terms of flexibility. Healthcare professionals (doctors, nurses, dentists, etc.), food services employees, cosmetologists, manufacturing, teachers, and retail sales positions are a few occupations that require more "face time" on the job. These jobs may still be conducive to compressed work weeks provided coworkers create acceptable rotations. Jobs that require significant computer work and less face-to-face customer interaction (accounting, information technology, clerical, etc.) are more conducive to flexible scheduling. We can even hold meetings virtually via video conferencing software right on our computers.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Ensure that there are adequate, quality, affordable child care facilities and excellent public schools. Governments should consider subsidizing costs or providing tax credits for child care. Support can also include efforts to close the wage gap between women and men, while providing development and educational opportunities for women to enter into high-paying positions. Governments should have a fair representation of women and men in political positions. Affordable and quality healthcare is also necessary for everyone, and governments should negotiate with insurance providers to keep costs manageable. Many states are moving towards paid family and medical leave under FMLA.

In evaluating the best states for working moms, what are the top five indicators?

• Women's average earnings per year
• Unemployment rate of women
• Number of quality child care facilities
• Average cost of child care

Percent of employers in the state who provide family-friendly benefits

Stacey N. Doan Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children, Claremont McKenna College

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

First acknowledging that many individuals are multifaceted. We are parents, business partners, and colleagues. These various facets of our identity cannot be compartmentalized. At least not in modern day society. Even ideas of "parenting" and "family" have many different facets. To illustrate, when we say "work-life" balance and supporting families, we often think of parents of young children, but increasingly, as the population ages, taking care of elderly parents will be an important concern.

Second, create concrete policies and structures that help support families in all their diversity. The specific policies and structures may vary from place to place, and companies that take the time to research the specific needs of their employees will be the ones who will be able to most effective. As Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family and Children, we have found that not all policies are generalizable from one institution to another. Thus sensitivity to the context is of utmost importance. Just as importantly, what "family friendly" means varies as children develop and families change. Consider for example, that Facebook pays for egg freezing! They are family friendly, even before the arrival of children! In sum, companies need to have policies that are flexible and dynamic. They also need to know which support structures would be most important for their employees.

Finally, cultivate a culture that explicitly accepts, embraces, and celebrates the idea of being family friendly. "Culture" is very important, because you can have the best policies in place, but if your department culture is hostile - those policies will simply not work, or could potentially even be divisive.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

The careers that are most difficult are those with little flexibility with regards to timing. When I say timing, I mean this in a variety of ways. First, the most obvious are those that require you to be in the office at specific hours. Despite, the best intentions and efforts of parents, children do not only get sick after 5pm. But it is also important to think of "timing" with regards to life path. Take for example, while a professor's job can be relatively flexible day-to-day, the 6-7 years that it takes to be promoted from assistant to associate (and hence gain tenure) are also the child bearing years. In other words, the most intense, difficult, and stressful of one's career is also the time when people are having children. Finally, when I say timing, I mean that time is money. The cost of child care in this country is exorbitant. When the cost of child care is more than your paycheck, that career choice becomes extremely difficult.

Leanne Tortez Adjunct Professor, William James College

What can companies do to help working parents balance home and work life?

Companies can support working parents in many ways. Having a variety of family-friendly benefits available can be extremely helpful. Many employees nowadays are 'sandwiched' between different types of family demands, including both child care and elder care. Providing multiple benefits can give employees the option to choose which benefits are most helpful to them. These kinds of formal supports are crucial to helping working parents. Allowing flexibility is also key, which may involve flexibility in scheduling and how work gets accomplished.

However, we shouldn't ignore more informal types of workplace support that can also be incredibly helpful, most notably that from supervisors. Not only are supervisors often the gatekeepers to more formal types of support, such as benefits, but supervisors can help employees balance home and work life in other ways, too. Those supervisors that are specifically supportive of employees' home-related needs can allow for informal work accommodations. These can be as simple as allowing an employee to take a longer lunch break to attend to a family matter, allowing personal phone calls at work, or even providing emotional support. Developing and promoting a family-friendly organizational culture in these ways is advantageous to both the employee and the organization.

What careers are most difficult to balance work and family? Easiest?

Those careers that allow employees the flexibility to balance both domains are of course those that make it the easiest. Given today's technology, working from home, telecommuting, and other options allow employees the flexibility to attend to both. However, careers with high-demands and unpredictable schedules undoubtedly present challenges for the work-family interface. Such careers include those within fields like the military, health care, and law enforcement, to name a few.

What can state and local governments do to support working mothers?

Well, there is much room for improvement given that the US is one of the few developed countries without mandated paid leave. At the state and local government levels, statutes around paid family and medical leave would help support working parents. Only four states (California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York) have accomplished this thus far, leaving a majority of working parents to choose between family and work. Further, with the rise of dual-earner households, family responsibilities are now commonly distributed among both parents. As such, working fathers should not be overlooked in the development of family-related supports. Beyond paid family leave, support can also include policies around paid sick days, school/parental leave, and equal pay, among others.

How likely is it that Ivanka Trump's policies related to child care and paid family leave will be enacted?

I'm not sure about the likelihood of enactment for Ivanka Trump's (along with Marco Rubio's) most recent paid family leave plan proposal. It seems that allowing employees to draw from their social security in order to take time off for family matters essentially forces many employees to, ironically, choose between family and retirement. While this is less of a problem for higher-paid employees, who are less likely to rely solely on social security and more likely to have paid family leave through their organization, it poses problems for middle- and low-income employees. Despite its potential flaws, it is an important first step that hopefully spotlights the urgent need for a fair paid family leave plan for all.

Methodology

In order to determine the best and worst states for working moms, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across three key dimensions: 1) Child Care, 2) Professional Opportunities and 3) Work-Life Balance.

We evaluated those dimensions using 15 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for working moms.

We then determined each state and the District’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.

Child Care – Total Points: 40

• Day-Care Quality: Double Weight (~10.00 Points)
• Child-Care Costs: Full Weight (~5.00 Points)Note: This metric was adjusted for the median women’s salary.
• Pediatricians per Capita: Full Weight (~5.00 Points)
• School-System Quality: Double Weight (~10.00 Points)Note: This metric is based on WalletHub’s States with the Best & Worst School Systems ranking.
• Share of Nationally Accredited Child Care Centers: Full Weight (~5.00 Points)
• Number of Childcare Workers per Total Number of Children: Full Weight (~5.00 Points)Note: Childcare workers attend to the basic needs of children, such as dressing, bathing, feeding, and overseeing play. They may help younger children prepare for kindergarten or assist older children with homework.

Professional Opportunities – Total Points: 30

• Gender Pay Gap: Double Weight (~8.57 Points)Note: This metric measures women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s.
• Ratio of Female Executives to Male Executives: Full Weight (~4.29 Points)
• Median Women’s Salary: Full Weight (~4.29 Points)Note: This metric was adjusted for the cost of living.
• Share of Families in Poverty: Full Weight (~4.29 Points)Note: “Families” include single mothers with children aged 0 to 17.
• Female Unemployment Rate: Full Weight (~4.29 Points)
• Gender-Representation Gap in Different Economic Sectors: Full Weight (~4.29 Points)Note: This metric measures the absolute difference between the share of female employees and male employees.

Work-Life Balance – Total Points: 30

• Parental-Leave Policy Score: Double Weight (~15.00 Points)Note: This metric is based on the report card from Expecting Better: A State-by-State Analysis of Laws That Help Expecting and New Parents.
• Average Length of a Woman’s Work Week (in Hours): Full Weight (~7.50 Points)
• Women’s Average Commute Time (in Minutes): Full Weight (~7.50 Points)

 

Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Child Care Aware® of America, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Council for Community and Economic Research, National Partnership for Women & Families and WalletHub research.

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