Utah Women & Leadership Podcast

Childcare is an important consideration for millions of American families; 71% of all women with children under 18 are in the labor force, comprising one-third of the total female workforce in the U.S. Further, childcare costs are becoming increasingly burdensome; in the U.S. generally, and in 33 states specifically (including Utah), the annual cost of childcare  is higher than the cost of in-stat...

More than 40% of Utah women work in just two occupational groups, both of which pay less than the median state average. Over the past half-century or so, Utah women’s participation in the labor force has steadily increased at a rate of about 8% per decade.1 According to the most recent (2015) U.S. Census Bureau estimates, women in Utah make up 43.9% of the state workforce, which is slightly lower...

Utah has one of the largest gender wage gaps in the nation; women earn 71 cents per dollar that a man earns. In 2016, American women earned approximately 20% less than men. This gap has narrowed substantially since 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was passed and women earned 41% less than men; yet a gap persists, and a half century later women are still paid less than men in almost every occupation. C...

Utah women spend an average of 5.55 hours per day in unpaid work vs. 3.22 hours per day for Utah men. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the monetary value of women’s unpaid work is estimated to be $10 trillion each year, and women worldwide spend a significantly larger portion of their time than men performing this critical work. This happens for many reasons, including personal values a...

Overall, women in Utah live in poverty at a lower rate than the national average: Utah women (12.2%) vs. U.S. women (16%), and census data for 2015 ranks Utah 12th in the nation for the percentage of people living above the poverty line. The poverty rates are notably worse for certain groups. *This episode was originally released on November 30, 2018 Support the show

A national report stated that in 2015 nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. (43.3 million, or 17.9%) suffered from a mental illness and that 9.8 million Americans (4% of all adults) had a serious mental illness. One recent in-depth study showed Utah ranking sightly below the national average in the percentage of adults who suffer from poor mental health, the state regularly reports rates higher than th...

One in three Utah women will experience some form of domestic violence in her lifetime, and 40% of adult homicides in Utah are domestic violence related. Domestic violence is a serious and widespread issue affecting women and families in Utah. One in three Utah women will experience some form of domestic violence in her lifetime, and our rate is slightly higher than the national average (32.4% vs...

Over the past 30 years, Utah women’s voting participation has been steadily decreasing, and their ranking versus women nationally is also on the decline. Utah has a strong history of women’s political and civic involvement. The state was an early leader in giving women the vote, was home to the first female state senator in the nation, and, as recently as 1996, had the strongest women’s voter part...

Women who reported sexual harassment, the "silence breakers," were chosen by Time magazine as the person of the year for 2017. Although workplace sexual harassment has likely been around since the conception of workplaces, and sexual harassment has been illegal in the U.S. for decades, it is safe to say that the issue has never received as much attention as it has since the autumn of 201...