WeNews: Top U.S. Cities for Women’s Well-Being Ranked

http://womensenews.org/story/health/120426/study-ranks-top-us-cities-womens-well-being

How does your city stack up ? « Measure of America », a Social Science Research Council project, recently published a study on the best and worst urban areas to live in as an American woman. The factors used were life expectancy, earning power, and education. So where are you ?

Obviously, this was a US-specific study, and I would be very curious to know where the rest of the world ranks. But I thought I’d put it to you Go Girls to strike up a conversation on your personal rankings.

Personally, in terms of what is important for me, life expectancy doesn’t top the list. Maybe I’ll feel differently when I’m in my 70s, but I figure between 77 and 83, as long as I will have lived a fulfilled and happy life, I doubt I’d care about that 5-year difference. Education possibilities are crucial to me, as are earning power. General job opportunities are also very important to me.

So now I’m offering you all a little project: Tell me about your city — not necessarily what numbers you can find in research, but rather, how have you felt as a woman in your area? I’ll start (for argument’s sake, I’m going to cover the province of Québec in general, since the population is approximately that of a huge city):

There are more Quebecois women who go to university than men (though I believe that this is true in most developed countries at the moment). However, when looking at women in the universities and CEGEPs (College of general and vocational education), the distribution isn’t as varied as one might hope. Pure sciences and engineering are still dominated by men. Management/business and law, though women are on the rise, are still also largely men. Education and the arts are dominated by women. Though I purposefully have not looked at the numbers, through this I can only assume that women are making, on the whole, smaller salaries than men, due to this discrepancy. Through talking with friends in all milieus, I have concluded that the average female teacher makes approximately 22,000$ coming out of university, while the average male engineer makes about 45,000$ his first year. For those who don’t go to university, unfortunately I am not sure what the trends are (though stereotypical career choices such as construction for men are quite high-paying).

On the whole, I have rarely if ever felt discriminated against as a woman no matter where I have gone in the province of Québec. Perhaps I lucked out.

Where are you ?