Renata Nunes smiles as she walks out of a huddle with the other competitors ahead of the OptiWize Women’s Bull Riding Challenge at The Next Gambler, an event hosted by the Taylor Rodeo Association and the Austin Gamblers, Austin’s PBR Teams League at the Wilco Events Center, June 27, 2026. The event marked the official partnership launch between Premier Women’s Rodeo and the Gamblers to create more opportunities for women in professional bull riding.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Texas has some of the widest gaps between men and women in the country, particularly in education and health, according to a new study that ranked the state third worst nationwide for women’s equality.
WalletHub ranked Texas 48th among the 50 states in its annual study released Monday, ahead of only Oklahoma and Utah. The state scored 40.94 out of 100, compared with 77.74 for top-ranked Hawaii.
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How Texas compares with the rest of the country
Women make up 50.9% of the U.S. population but only about a third of state lawmakers and 35% of directors on S&P 500 corporate boards.
In Texas, women make up 50.6% of the population and 61 of the Legislature’s 181 members, or 33.7% — roughly in line with the national share. The gap is wider in the state’s congressional delegation: Women hold seven of Texas’ 38 U.S. House seats, or 18.4%, and neither of its two U.S. Senate seats.
How they measured women’s equality
WalletHub compared states across 17 measures, looking at differences between men and women in areas including earnings, unemployment, executive positions, entrepreneurship, advanced degrees, math scores, access to affordable doctor visits and political representation. When women outperformed men, WalletHub counted the state as having equality on that measure rather than giving it extra credit.
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Where Texas has the widest gender gaps
Texas’ weakest showing came in education and health, where it ranked 49th.
“The U.S. has considerable and serious problems with unequal access, maternal mortality, reproductive health care, and racial bias in the practice of medicine,” Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity & Justice and professor at Rutgers University, said. “Black women, in particular, face much higher maternal mortality rates – in 2024, for example, it was three times that of white women.”
The state ranked 37th for workplace equality and 39th for political empowerment.
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WalletHub ranked Texas 34th for the earnings gap, 36th for the disparity in executive positions and 31st for differences in hours worked. Texas performed comparatively better in entrepreneurship, ranking 19th for the gap between male and female entrepreneurship rates.
Thousands attended the Women’s March on Austin Saturday afternoon, January 21, 2017, joining other movements across the country to stands up for women’s rights.
Austin American-Statesman
Gasman, pointed to pay transparency, regular pay-equity audits, paid family leave and affordable child care as policies that can help shrink workplace gaps.
“Women cannot challenge pay inequities if salaries are not transparent, and research shows that when transparency policies are in place, gender pay gaps are smaller,” Gasman said, adding that research has found smaller gender pay gaps where transparency policies are in place.
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The study gave equal weight to workplace conditions and education and health, with each accounting for 40% of a state’s score. Political representation made up the remaining 20%.
How Texas policies overlap with the gaps
WalletHub did not examine the causes of the disparities it found, but some of the measures it used overlap with policy choices made by Texas. Its education and health category, for example, measures only gender differences in advanced degrees, math scores and the share of adults who could not afford a doctor visit — not abortion access or maternal mortality.
Dr. Cara Buskmiller, a maternal fetal medicine physician at Texas Children’s Hospital in Austin, followed Amanda Senf and Nikkia since January and helped deliver a successful outcome.
Aaron E. Martinez, Austin American-Statesman
One-third of WalletHub’s education and health score is based on the difference between men and women who said they could not afford a doctor’s visit. Texas is one of the states that has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which extended eligibility to nearly all low-income adults in states that adopted it.
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Research suggests that expansion can affect gender disparities in access to care, not just overall insurance rates. A study published in 2026 found that Medicaid expansion improved access to primary care and reduced some gender and racial disparities in obtaining appointments.
Texas’ workplace laws also overlap with several measures in the ranking. Texas law does not require private employers to provide sick or parental leave, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Employers that do provide it generally determine whether that leave is paid or unpaid and who qualifies.
Pay policy is another area where Texas has considered changes that researchers have linked to gender disparities. A bill introduced during the 2025 legislative session would have barred employers from asking applicants about their wage history and protected workers who discussed their pay, but it never advanced beyond a House subcommittee.
How Texas compares with neighboring states
Texas also ranked near the bottom compared with most of its neighboring states. Oklahoma finished 49th, but Arkansas ranked 45th and Louisiana 41st. New Mexico, by contrast, ranked sixth overall and fifth in education and health.
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Hawaii ranked first overall, followed by Maryland, Alaska, Maine and Vermont.
WalletHub said the data used in the rankings were collected through July 20 from sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Women’s Law Center and Center for American Women and Politics.