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Top 15 US cities for women in the workforce

The role of women in the national labor force has been steadily rising over the last five decades. Since 1967, the percentage of the US workforce comprised of women has increased from 29 percent to nearly 50 percent. In 1960, only one in ten American mothers was the sole or primary family breadwinner, compared to four out of every ten mothers in 2011.

Nerdwallet broke down a list 522 cities into large, medium-sized and small cities to find  the best  of various types of places for women in the workforce. For more information on affordability in each of these cities, check out NerdWallet’s Cost of Living Calculator.

15. Whittier, Calif.

Frank Franklin II/AP/File
In this Thursday, April 24, 2014 photo, Crystl Faye Horton-Friedman, poses for a portrait at Del Frisco's in New York. In Whittier, Calif. the median income for women is more than men.

  • By Sreekar Jasthi Guest blogger

The median salary of more than $50,000 for Whitter’s full-time female workers is not only strong compared to the national average, but it’s even higher than the median income for working men in the city. The top two employers in Whittier are both hospitals, making it a good city for women in the health services field.

To take a closer look at the cites that have the best characteristics to support women in the workforce, NerdWallet crunched the numbers to analyze the following factors:

1.    Women’s earnings: we looked at the median salary for female full-time, year-round workers in each city and included the median gross rent as a proxy to gauge cost of living.

2.    Income equality: we calculated women’s pay as a percentage of men’s pay to measure the level of income equality in each city.

3.    Population growth: to assess long-term growth potential in each place, we included recent population growth.

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Mark Sappenfield
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