Where a Woman Would Want to Work

According to the Wall Street Journal, more women are more choosy.

Having upped their earning potential and reduced the prejudice toward being single, women feel less pressure to find a mate. At 51.4%, in 2023, a majority of all 18 to 40-year-old women are single. And, for women without a college degree, the marriage rate dove from 79% to 52%.

But as for the wealth gap, it is still motherhood that makes the difference:

So, if women are choosier and single, the next question is where to live?

The Best Places for Working Women

Called The Glass Ceiling Index, The Economist looked at the working environment in 29 OECD countries. Among the 19 they looked at, the U.S. was #19. Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Portugal were the top five.

Their scoring scale was based on 10 criteria. They assessed paid leave for mothers and fathers, women on company boards, in management, and in government, education, women in the work force, and of course, the gender pay gap. The (egregiously) low U.S. score reflected a ripple. From no parental leave, the externalities spread to days off, to pay, even to board representation.

This year, nudging Iceland out of first place, Sweden continued to occupy a top position. As for managerial positions, women hold 43.7%, and board seats, 37.7%. Correspondingly, the wage gap was a relatively low 7.3% (but still a gap). While The Economist compliments Sweden’s numbers, we can remain concerned that even they are below majority levels.

Assessing different criteria, a separate 2021 Bloomberg/Businessweek Report looked at safety, mobility, maternity provisions, and equality. The fifth slot, wealth, included earnings potential and financial independence. With more realistic analysis than The Economist, the Bloomberg report gave no city a high score in every category. Ranked #1, Toronto offered working women safety and equality but got a low mobility score because of its aging subways and traffic problems. Meanwhile, New York had a dismal 2.4 (out of 5) for safety. But equality and maternity fared better. No city in Sweden was in the study.

Our Bottom Line: Choice Architecture

College Ranking

Two decades ago, in an especially excellent Atlantic article, former Reed College president Colin Diver slammed the U.S. News college ranking reports. Summarizing the downside of ranking while explaining why Reed refused to participate in the process, he took readers to a slew of unintended consequences that included an “irresistible pressure toward homogeneity” and the temptation to elevate scores by changing institutional procedures. Meanwhile, he marveled at the quantity of brochures he received from schools hoping to influence the reputational survey he completed annually when he did participate as the Dean of Penn Law. (We later became aware that one university president, also hoping to impact that reputational category, sent his own homemade hot sauce–Houshmand’s Hazardous Hot Sauce–to other university officials.)

In addition, critics looked at the surveys themselves. For a 2011 New Yorker article, journalist Malcolm Gladwell showed how survey questions reflect the perspective of the designer and skew the results. Focusing on graduate business school ranking by 5 magazines, one Forbes writer perfectly illustrated how different questions create different analysis. In one example he explains that Forbes uses the financial gain of graduates after 5 years as a ranking variable for graduate business schools while U.S. News uses starting salaries.

Choice Architecture

A behavioral economist (and plain old logic) would say that researchers’ choice architecture affects their ranking criteria and analysis. Sort of like a building’s blueprint, the design of a project shapes what we decide to do. If the elevator is hidden, we take the stairs. Similarly, through their choice architecture, ranking questionnaires, depending on their topics, can nudge participants toward a particular answer.

So, where would women want to work? No place is ideal.

My sources and more: Always, when two articles or studies converge the synergy is a pleasure. But when there are four, it’s a bonanza! Today we had studies that related to working women here, here, here, and here. Then though, for our concerns with ranking criteria and analysis, I still recommend this 2011 New Yorker article.