Indiana ranked 46th of 50 in women's equality

Such disparities in pay, education, health care and leadership opportunities, among other metrics, led personal finance website WalletHub to rank Indiana 46th out of the 50 states in women’s equality, with 50th being the “worst” state.

“Bloomington has identified issues and is working on them, whereas other parts of the state don’t even recognize the inequality that goes on,” said Doris Wittenburg, president of the League of Women Voters of Bloomington-Monroe County. “Women have just not been empowered to try to correct those inequalities.”

Women’s role in the workforce has changed dramatically in the 94 years since the 19th Amendment was adopted into the Constitution, which is celebrated on Aug. 26 as Women’s Equality Day. WalletHub ranked Indiana 48th out of 50 in the category of “workplace environment,” which comprises median weekly earnings, number of executives, average work hours for full-time workers, number of minimum-wage workers and unemployment rate.

Wittenburg remembers growing up in a time when “women weren’t allowed to do certain jobs just because they were women.”

“Fortunately, that has changed, but not completely,” she said.

The median annual income of a woman in Indiana is $33,419, compared with a man’s $45,620, according to 2012 American Community Survey Data from the United States Census Bureau. However, statistics on the gender wage gap can be misleading, according to Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, a professor of labor and employment law in the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University who was quoted as an expert in the WalletHub study.