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
Paying Today and Tomorrow: Charting the Financial Costs of Workplace Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment remains deeply pervasive in the workplace, wreaking havoc on the lives of survivors. This report fills a gap in our knowledge of the economic costs of sexual harassment for the individual women and men who experience it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with survivors of workplace sexual harassment and stakeholder experts, and a review of the literature, the report provides a detailed pathway for capturing the financial consequences of workplace sexual harassment for individual workers in both the short term and over their lifetimes. The research is based on a collaboration between the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the TIME’S UP Foundation and presents the first step towards identifying the data needed for a comprehensive national assessment of the financial and economic costs of sexual harassment.
Tackling the Gender and Racial Patenting Gap to Drive Innovation: Lessons from Women’s Experiences
Tackling the Gender and Racial Patenting Gap to Drive Innovation: Lessons from Women’s Experiences shows the challenges women face in patenting process and provides recommendations to diversify innovation. The report highlights experiences of inventors and barriers to entry across fields and the unique difficulties women inventors—and particularly women inventors of color—face throughout the innovation and patenting process. The authors make recommendations on how to get more women and women of color in the pipeline. These include tackling systemic racial and gender bias and discrimination, investing in child care and work-life balance supports, and increasing support and funding for accelerator programs for women.
Even as Payroll Jobs Recover, Young Workers Face Unemployment and a Hostile Labor Market
New June jobs data show the strongest monthly job growth for women since August 2020. Despite this, it will still take women another 9.3 months to get back to pre-COVID-10 levels, compared with 6.7 months for men. Further, the unemployment rate increased slightly, with rates of unemployment remaining twice as high for younger workers.
