Portland area is ranked 'best city' for women
Courtesy / Business.org
Portland is the best city in the nation for working women, based on how many women have college degrees, unemployment data, women's wages and the number of sexual harassment claims.
Portland is the best city in the nation for working women, and Lewiston-Auburn and Bangor are in the Top 10 best “towns,” according to a national list released this week.
Small-business resource site Business.org, in honor of Women’s History Month, ranked urban areas nationwide on the most opportunities and best spaces for women to work. It also looked at factors like how many women have college degrees, unemployment data, women’s wages and number of sexual harassment claims.
Portland/South Portland — which actually includes most of southern Maine in the study — beat out No. 2, the Washington, D.C.-Alexandria/Arlington, Va., area, and No. 3, Lincoln, Neb. In the towns category, Lewiston-Auburn was third and Bangor was seventh.
The division between cities and towns was a population of 250,000, and the site used the official Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Cumberland and York counties. Portland has a population of 67,000 and South Portland of 25,400, but the official metropolitan area, which also includes the growing Biddeford-Saco area, has an overall population of 512,000, according to the 2010 Census.
In the towns list, the Burlington, Vt., area came in first, and Missoula, Mont., came in second. After Lewiston-Auburn, the upper Midwest dominated, with Fargo, N.D.; Rochester, Minn.; and Grand Forks, N.D., beating out Bangor.
Four criteria
Business.org looked at how many women have college degrees, unemployment data, women’s wages and the number of sexual harassment filings to come up with the list.
In Portland, 48.2% of women hold a bachelor's degree or higher, women make 85.6% of what men do (which is higher than the national average of around 80%), the unemployment rate for women is 2.6% and it has the lowest percentage of sexual harassment filings, according to business.org.
- Rate of education: The number of women aged 25 to 34 who hold a bachelor’s degree or above. “These women would be relatively recently graduated, so the cities they end up in could give us a big clue as to what cities attract newly working women. The more degreed women, the better,” the site said.
- Unemployment data for women: Unemployment data in each city for women aged 16 and up, with a lower unemployment rate boosting a city in the rankings.
- Women’s wages: “We want women to get fairly compensated for their work, so we analyzed women’s salaries in each city as a percentage of men’s salaries in the same area,” ‘business.org said. Less disparity meant a higher ranking. Even in Portland, but overall nationally as well, men still earn more than women, even in the same role, the site said.
- Sexual harassment claims: “Unfortunately, almost half of women report that they’ve experienced harassment at work,” the site said. “A truly great city for working women would be one where they can feel safe, so fewer claims translated to a better rank.”
West is not best
Business.org noted that the lists are weighed heavily toward the East Coast and Midwest.
“As we expected, several East Coast cities made our list of the best cities for working women,” it said. “More surprising, however, was the strong Midwest representation: Wisconsin and Nebraska both made multiple appearances on our city list.”
Pointing out Fort Collins, Colo, is the westernmost city on either list, Business.org said, “Given that California tends to dominate most of our studies (see: Best Cities for Entrepreneurs and a million others), we expected the same here. San Francisco came closest [at No. 18], but its high sexual harassment rate kept it out of the Top 10. When it comes to working women, West Coast is not best coast.”
All of the data for the lists was based on the 2017 American Community Survey provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. Business.org is a small-business resource hub that offers finance, IT and marketing resources for small businesses.
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