- While U.S. News & World Report ranks Utah as the #1 best state overall, WalletHub ranks it last for women’s equality.
- WalletHub’s metric relies on a narrow comparison of economic status and political office holding, treating lower workforce participation or earnings relative to men as the primary indicator of inequality.
- The index ignores marital status and motherhood — factors that enable many Utah women to choose part-time or home-focused roles while benefiting from the economic stability of married households.
- Incorporating variables like faith commitments and marital satisfaction presents a far more complete and accurate picture of women’s true status relative to men in Utah.
Just three weeks ago U.S. News & World Report ranked Utah the “Best State in America” for the fourth straight year. Using 71 measures across eight categories, Utah again came out on top, ranking in the top 10 for five of the eight categories. Utah also led the country in 2026 for retiree happiness, work environment and community wellbeing, landing near the top in overall happiness.
It’s a little startling then, that another organization that ranked Utah No. 6 in overall happiness in 2026, WalletHub, recently ranked Utah as the worst state (for the 11th year in a row) in “women’s equality.”
The headline flashing across social media creates the impression that Utah is possibly the worst state in America for women — a place where women are treated more unfairly, fare worse and face more discriminatory cultural norms and institutions than women elsewhere.
How then to square that with numerous rankings in which Utah leads the nation for happiness and well-being? Clearly, it depends on what you’re measuring.
WalletHub’s narrow formula
So how is WalletHub measuring “women’s equality?” It’s a shockingly simple metric that measures differences between women and men in workplace environment, educational attainment, doctor-visit affordability and holding political office (where Utah ranks 29th).
Workplace environment combines estimates of male and female earnings per week and per year, work hours, executive level positions, minimum wage, unemployment, entrepreneurship, job security and the poverty rate. Essentially, if men work and earn more, the metric assumes, then women must be “unequal.”
This is where the irony starts. I have studied women’s work situation preferences for decades now. One thing has not changed: The majority of mothers with children at home, especially those with young children, continue to prefer part-time work or no work over full-time employment.
Yet, across the nation, many women are working far more than they wish to be. Women make up more than half of the entire U.S. labor force today, an increase from 33% in 1948.
Unexpectedly, men’s labor force participation decreased from 87% to 68% during the same period. Women began surpassing men in the attainment of bachelor’s degrees starting in 1982, today earning 58% of all bachelor’s degrees and 62% of all master’s degrees. By 2005, women overtook men among the college-educated workforce.
All over the nation, indeed across the world, leaders are scrambling to address the multidimensional crisis of boys and men falling behind in education, employment, family life and mental health.
This does not bode well for “women’s equality.” A pithy description from Fortune in early August captures the phenomenon: “The stay-at-home boyfriend, once a punchline, is now a statistically significant labor market phenomenon.” What followed was a report on recent findings showing that roughly 70% of the hours young men aren’t working are “being spent on video games and recreational computer use.”
The startling image of a woman coming home after long hours at Starbucks to find her boyfriend playing video games on their apartment couch happens far too often for working-class cohabiting couples. Yet, ironically, WalletHub metrics might call that greater “equality” for women.
Female inequality, or male responsibility?
In fact, Utah’s ranking as “worst state” may actually be better described as an indication of economic strength and male responsibility. For the fifth consecutive year, Utah ranked No. 1 in the nation for the highest marriage rate, about 66% higher than the national rate.
Marriage is our most important economic institution. Married households pool two incomes, share housing and other fixed costs, insure one another against unemployment or illness and jointly accumulate assets.
That is why Utah women have a much lower poverty rate than the national average (8.3% vs. 12%). Married households tend to have considerably greater wealth than single-headed households, profoundly strengthening women’s economic well-being over the life course.
In addition, being married to a responsible provider makes it possible for women to choose what they want to do when they become a mother — protecting their well-being and their irreplaceable role in the lives of their children.
Marriage as an equality engine
The evidence is clear: One of the greatest sources of real equality for women is marriage to responsible men. In fact, the states that scored highest in some areas on the WalletHub equality metrics are in many cases the same states struggling most economically, and in which women experience higher rates of poverty.
The poverty rate for women is low in Utah, but it jumps significantly for single women. This underscores Utah State University’s Utah Women & Leadership project’s emphasis on the need to better support single mothers in Utah and encourage all women to invest in the education and skills that would enable them to provide for themselves and their families independently. WalletHub’s indicator of educational differences between women and men suggests there is room for growth in women’s educational attainment.
In fact, the narrative women encounter most often today is one that tells them to postpone marriage and childbearing to establish their careers, with the underlying assumption that marriage and children mean a loss of identity, meaning and purpose.
As young women are encouraged to invest in college and personal growth more than healthy and committed relationships, the Austin Institute notes that women today “may get and keep good jobs — but without a husband or children toward whom that income might be directed.”
The result may be an increase in WalletHub’s metric of “equality” right alongside a simultaneous decrease in women’s flourishing.
Marriage and faith mutually supporting women
As multiple studies have confirmed, marriage is the single strongest differentiator of happiness for both women and men in America today. Married women are at a 30-point advantage when it comes to happiness; in a very happy marriage, the likelihood of being very happy jumps to 545%.
We found a similar outcome drawing on a large sample of U.S. women last year. Married women with children were more than twice as likely to be very happy, say life was enjoyable, experience stronger social connections, report more meaning and purpose, and receive more touch than single, childless women.
Marriage and an absence of marriages, of course, doesn’t take place in a vacuum. And it’s also clear that faith commitments predispose a willingness of men and women alike to make lasting commitments to each other and to children they bring into the world.
Women of faith likewise have higher levels of happiness and well-being, according to multiple, converging data points. That’s not controversial at all and self-evident in the research.
Over decades, rigorous longitudinal study designs show a strong connection between religious participation and every key indicator of flourishing, including “happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships.”
Our own BYU Wheatley Institute research of 8,000 religious and nonreligious women from 11 countries found that in the United States, women who combined weekly church attendance with religious practices at home were:
- Five times more likely to report frequently feeling that their lives had meaning and purpose
- Four times more likely to report a high level of life happiness
- Three times more likely to report the highest levels of relationship quality, emotional closeness and sexual satisfaction in their relationships
- Women of faith also reported significantly higher levels of shared decision making, fewer money problems, and more frequent patterns of forgiveness, commitment and kindness in their relationships.
A broader view of equality
None of this shows up in an equality metric focused almost exclusively on employment status compared with men. But a full picture of women’s equality requires us to broaden our gaze.
Likewise, a state that honors women in their full equality will focus on flourishing, including strong marriages to responsible men. That will likely require a cultural reframing around what true equality looks like.
In the most popular article ever published by The Atlantic, Anne-Marie Slaughter stated, “If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.”
The former Princeton professor then noted that “Workers who put their careers first are typically rewarded; workers who choose their families are overlooked, disbelieved, or accused of unprofessionalism.”
“Ultimately, it is society that must change, coming to value choices to put family ahead of work just as much as those to put work ahead of family,” she concluded. “If we really valued those choices, we would value the people who make them.”