The Status of Women in the States project ranks and grades Maine across several areas of women’s lives. While Maine performs better in some areas, no matter the rank, there are still barriers and inequities that prevent women from succeeding and thriving. Across all indices, Maine ranks toward the top of states in the country. Maines’s performance is the strongest on the Political Participation and Reproductive Rights indices. Maines’s performance is weakest on the Employment and Earnings and the Health and Well-Being indices.
Explore the Data
As state policies and programs have changed over the years, so has the status of women in Maine. Since 1996, Maine has made progress in some areas, while lagging in others.
Articles and Publications
Unseen Efforts: Disparities in Unpaid Care Work Before and After COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore the need for unpaid care work, as well as the highly unequal distribution of care work. This study contributes to the understanding of care work by providing post-COVID assessments of changes in unpaid caregiving by gender, race/ethnicity, [...]
One Year Into Trump’s Second Term, Black Women Face Disproportionate Job Losses
The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that Black women lost 251,000 jobs between January and August of 2025. While this number reflects a downward revision from a higher estimate last year, it still represents a large and unequal decrease [...]
Revisiting Occupational Segregation and the Valuation of Women’s Work
While population ageing increases the demand for care work, new automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), reinforce the importance of human interaction, with recent research documenting significant wage premiums for social skills. Against this background, we investigate two factors behind the gender wage gap: [...]
