Is South Dakota a Good Place for Working Moms?

Mother's Day is coming up on Sunday (May 9, in case you've forgotten) and not surprisingly, many moms will be working on that day. My mom worked well into her 70s and was always working when we were kids. She worked exclusively overnights so that she could take us to school, attend meetings, drive us back and forth to activities, etc.

That is correct, our mom got no sleep for almost 18 years! How she did it, I will never know and when you're a kid, you don't care. Geez, we were rotten kids!

WalletHub noted that the pandemic affected working moms at a higher rate than working dads, but they are now regaining employment faster than dads. However, problems for working moms continue regardless of pandemic conditions.

Working moms still are facing a substantial pay gap from their male coworkers making 85% of what men do for the same position.

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Progress in dealing with issues of inequality, parental leave policies, cost-effective childcare, and more is being made at very different rates across the country. To determine which states are moving things in a more "working mom-friendly" direction, WalletHub looked at a wide-ranging group of statistics from 3 basic categories.

In the Child Care category, they considered cost, quality, number of childcare workers per total number of children, pediatricians per capita, and more.

The Professional Opportunity Category compared states according to the gap in gender pay, median women's salaries, number of families living in poverty, female unemployment rates, and also how friendly the state is to moms working from home.

Finally, in the category of Work-Life Balance, they examined each state's parental leave policies, the average length of women's workweeks in hours, and also their average commute times.

So where did South Dakota land on the list of Best & Worst States for Working Moms?

Number thirteen overall, a solid number five in the Professional Opportunities area, in the 20th position under Child Care, and 24th in the work-life balance category. So not bad in the first category, but plenty of room for improvement in the others.

To check out the complete report see WalletHub online.

Source: WalletHub