Exploring Gender Inequality with Maps and Tables [Interactive Maps]

The Gender Equality Explorer was created by the Women's Foundation of Minnesota and  the University of Minnesota's Center on Women and Public Policy.  

 Link to the Explorer Here

The tools are based on American Community Survey Data. You can generate tables and maps based on different geographic areas and variables.

Table Tools - The table tool is straightforward; however, there are 116 different variables choices. This can feel a little overwhelming.  The generated tables are neat and easy to read (To some people, these tables might be easier to generate and read that the ones that come from American Fact Finder); however, be careful when you run a query for multiple geographies. For example, if you want to look at household type by county in Connecticut, the default is for the data for each county to be displayed on a separate page. You have to click through all of the pages OR change the default setting on the number of geography items per page.  Depending on your tables and geographies, these tables can become unwieldy.  The nice thing that is you can download the data into Excel (Click on the EXPORT tab). This allows you a little more control over how you present the data.

Maps: The mapping feature takes a bit longer to load (be patient) and opens up to a default map. When you get there, click on the "Change Data" button to make a different map. [This button is on the upperleft hand corner of your screen]. Once you finish making your map, you can export it to an image or to a power point.

While I really like this site, keep in mind that you are limited to census/ACS variables.  So you can look at education and poverty by sex category, but you can't look at other important indicators if they aren't ACS questions (such as the number of male and female politicians). With that said, this tool is a easier to use than American Fact Finder because it limits you to sex/gender variables.