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2015’s Best & Worst States for Working Moms

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Although women now comprise roughly half of the American workforce, they still earn about three-quarters as much as men do and have far less upward mobility, as evidenced by the fact that less than 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies have female chief executives. Even the new crop of high-profile female CEOs seems to be compared with their male peers.

Such obvious inequality has spawned a great deal of debate about gender roles in a shifting socioeconomic environment. Workplace inequality is important not only in the spirit of a merit-based economy, but also for deeply ingrained social reasons. 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, it would seem, is taking shape at different rates across the country. 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 inherently underappreciated segment of the population, WalletHub analyzed state dynamics across 12 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.