REVIZIT: Parental Leave

While I haven't regularly participated in Makeover Monday in the past, I found this week's topic to be quite interesting. Partially because as a mother, parental leave affected me.  This week, I decided to visualize the story that stood out to me.  The other reason why I wanted to participate in this week's Makeover Monday is because I visualized similar data when I made over data from a Huffington Post article on maternal leave in 2014. This was a meaningful reviz for me, because not only do I get to tell the story I found in the data but it also gives me the opportunity to compare my 2018 work to the 2014 work.  

2014 Huffington Post Revizit

The following image is from a 2014 Huffington Post article which inspired me to see how I might visualize this data. 

I originally used the story points in Tableau to visualize this data on paid maternal leave with a bar chart.  

Four years later, here's how I visualized similar data (parental leave instead of maternal leave).

The Deltas

1. The 2018 visualization has a title.  In 2014, I used story points and had the navigation squares contain the message.  In 2018, I used a single sheet dashboard, which lent itself to using a title.  
2. I called out the US more in the 2018 visualization.  In 2014, I labeled the data, so that the reader could see that the UK provided 52 weeks of paid maternal leave, whereas  the US provided zero.  In 2018, I took the labels off because the number of weeks for total parental leave that Estonia provided didn't really matter...the bar chart had the legend to show that it was over 160 and the US was still at zero. To highlight the absence of data (always a challenge), I added a dark red oval to the visualization to emphasize the fact that the US provided zero weeks of paid parental leave.  Additionally, as I was about to post the visualization, I reviewed my title one last time and decided to change it to really spell out the point...the US is the worst for this particular measurement, whether it's compared to other counties in the G7 or the OECD. 
3. ​The reference line is more descriptive.
4. Different color palettes.  In 2014, I used a bright green which I think I was trying to correspond to the palette of the original visualization from HuffPo.  In 2018, I opted for something a little more muted. 

The Similarities

1. Bar charts rule. I contemplated other chart types but I thought it was important to show all of the data on paid parental leave.  I wanted to show the US at the bottom at the list.  
2. Reference lines rule. The reference line helps compare countries to the average and helps the reader conclude on whether an individual or group of countries is better or worse than the average. 
3. From a data perspective, regardless of whether it's total parental or maternal leave, in four years, the US has not made any changes in paid leave for parents. 

Looking at this chart a few days after I made it, I can definitely see some things I want to change or tweak. Maybe I'll visualize it again in four years to see what's changed in the data and my design.