WalletHub, a personal finance website, has just come out with a new study that compared all 50 states for 17 indicators of gender equality, and Utah scored poorly in three areas: workplace environment; education and health; and political empowerment. As a matter of fact, we ranked dead last for workplace environment and education and health.

What didn't surprise me was that they found Utah has the largest gender pay gap in the country (vs Hawaii, which was the best for women's equality). According to Human Capital Innovations, Utah women earn $0.73 for every $1 a man earns, with a yearly average for women of $47,000 compared to men, who earn $65,000 annually.

We women haven't progressed that much, financially, in the past 50 years. Until 1974, it was very difficult to open a bank account in our own names or even get a line of credit without a man co-signing for us.

Federal laws changed to stop this kind of discrimination against women back then, but many banks were slow to respond. Yet there were groups of women around the country who got together and formed women's banks and/or women's banking divisions within banks.

I remember Vervene "Vee" Carlisle, a former Utah legislator and well-known advocate for women's rights who developed a section for women's banking at Tracy-Collins Bank & Trust during the 1980s. Unfortunately, it didn't last that long, despite its popularity among its female patrons.

Lenders stepped up and realized that it was good business to not discriminate against women and unmarried couples, and the need for specialty banking fell to the wayside. Bankers nowadays are more than willing to offer financial advice to men and women despite high or low incomes.

Given the average yearly incomes for both sexes in Utah, it's obvious that the hope of buying a home is a hard dream. If lenders on average like to see no more than one-third of your income going toward housing costs, a woman with an income of $47,000 could only have a mortgage payment of around $1,300—where a man making $65,000 could pay $1,800 per month.

Given current mortgage interest rates, it would be next to impossible to find a condo or home with this low potential monthly payment.

Hell, even a rental is hard to find, when two-bedroom apartment rents—reported by Apartments.com as of August 2024—average $1,770 per month. Downtown high-rise apartments in newer buildings can cost up to $2,800 per month, or more.

The only path to home ownership for low-wage workers in Utah is to inherit a property, inherit money to buy a property or "couple up" with someone to combine resources and purchase a home or condo.

Mobile homes are much less expensive, of course, but there is a monthly space rent, which can be $600 to $1,500 per month on top of any payment on the actual mobile home.