According to the Women in Insurance Initiative (WII), 19% of board seats, 11% of named insider officer positions and 12% of top officer positions are held by women in the insurance industry despite women comprising more than 60% of the workforce. Additionally, the WII asserts that women in insurance earn 62 cents for every dollar earned by men as of 2016. Gender disparity is not an issue exclusive just to the insurance industry. To discover where women receive the most equal treatment across the U.S., a WalletHub study examined three dimensions (workplace environment, education and health, and political empowerment) using 17 different metrics, including income disparity, unemployment-rate disparity, job security disparity, the share of executive positions and more. Related: 12 best US cities for women looking to climb the career ladder On a positive note, several states emerged as leaders in women's rights. Unveil WalletHub's top 10 states for women's equality in the slideshow above. However, more work is needed to create greater gender equality, including increasing female representation in senior management roles in the insurance industry and beyond. One way companies can achieve greater gender equality amongst leadership is through changing perceptions about what makes a successful leader and combating implicit biases about women in professional contexts, according to Leslie Caughell, associate professor of political science and dean of the Birdsong School of Social Science at Virginia Wesleyan University, who spoke with WalletHub. Caughell also offered the following recommendations to corporations: "Many of the skills that we traditionally think of as 'feminine' and 'soft skills' play a role in improving the performances of executives in leadership positions. However, we are still more likely to associate leadership with masculine attributes like assertiveness and to penalize women that demonstrate those attributes as less agreeable or professional. However, numerous studies demonstrate that groups with more gender diversity outperform less diverse groups on multiple dimensions, and executives who excel in the more group-oriented leadership strategies may make particularly successful corporate leaders. So company policies that reward and encourage these soft skills may very well help greater numbers of women rise through their ranks into leadership positions." Read more:

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