For the final project I plan to explore an issue that is both local and national – maternity and paternity leave. This data set from the United Nations data portal provides data for maternity leave in every country. Not only does it show how many days of maternity leave is covered, but it also provides some contextual information including who provides the benefit in that country, how many days is allowed and the percentage of wages paid in the covered period.
Inspired by this data set, I also have an idea to visualize this February 2016 report on the best cities for women in tech. This Fast Company article only reported the story with a slideshow and the same infographics from the original Smart Asset analysis. I think there was an opportunity there to tell that story with maps and graphs. Ideally I’d like to take the maternity leave idea and visualize stats for maternity leave in major U.S. cities. This is an extremely relevant story for millennial women entering the workforce – I know I’d want to see it! If I can find data that compares maternity and paternity leave statistics between industries as well that would be ideal. I’d like to incorporate engagement functions such as clicking on a city on a map and having a graph with some description show up with the stats for maternity leave in that city.