Columbia, Maryland has done it again.
According to WalletHub’s report on the Best and Worst Cities for Women in 2026, Columbia was rated No. 1 in the nation out of 182 cities across 15 metrics.
This is the third year in a row Columbia has topped the national ratings.
WalletHub, the personal finance company, compared things like median earnings, unemployment rate, quality of women’s hospitals, and access to preventative healthcare for women across the United States to come up with its rankings. Seattle, Washington came in second and Fremont, California came in third place. The worst two cities for women were deemed Huntington, West Virginia and Jackson, Mississippi.
Dr. Cecilia Rio is an associate professor and graduate program director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Towson University. She talked about the importance of flex time and paid family leave as one of the main issues facing women.
“Approximately 60% of American Families are now either Female Head of Household or Two Earner family where a women’s income/career is important to financial and material well-being of the Household,” Rio said. “Women, now, more than ever, need access to quality childcare and elder care (aging parents) that is affordable.”
WalletHub notes that in most regions, women make up a higher percentage of the population than men, yet those locations may not offer women the best opportunities economically, psychologically, or professionally. Women working full-time still make only 82% of what men earn, on average, and remain underrepresented in leadership roles and politics.
The earnings gap is worse for Black women, who make only around 66% what white men in comparable jobs with comparable experience make. That wage disparity for Black women exists in every single state and the District of Columbia. The disparity, however, is even larger for Latina women, who earned only around 57.8 cents per dollar that a typical white man earned. That adds up to over $32,000 less income per year, impacting the Latina community in a profound way.
Rio wants local authorities to pay close attention to how dismantling DEI programs will negatively impact gender equity in the workforce, including access to institutional resources.
“White women, in particular, benefited a great deal from the implementation of Affirmative Action in the past in order to open up professional and other traditional male occupations,” Rio said. “It is ironic, for example, to hear the Trump’s Press Secretary complain about ‘wokeness’ —when the very policies that came from the social movements of the 60s and 70s knocked down the doors of discrimination and stubborn glass ceilings that kept women out of such prestigious careers to begin with.”
In Columbia, however, women have the highest median annual wages after adjusting for the cost of living, at $63,920. The poverty rate is the eighth-lowest in the country at 8.2%.
The job market is good, with an unemployment rate of just over 3%, which is the 17th-lowest in the country. In other cities, the unemployment rate can run as high as 13%. Also, in Columbia, around 23% of business are owned by women, which is the 31st-highest percentage out of the 182 cities ranked.
Women in Columbia tend to have good health, too. The city has the 10th-best life expectancy for women at birth. It has the 12th-highest share of women over the age of 21 who have had a cervical cancer screening when recommended and the 3rd-highest percentage of women who have gotten a mammogram in the past two years. Finally, nearly 86% of women in Columbia are physically active, the ninth-highest percentage in the U.S.
Other metrics that factored into WalletHub’s rankings included abortion policies and access, suicide rate for women, female uninsured rate, “economic clout” of women-owned businesses, and more.
