Editor’s note: This commentary is by Sue Racanelli, of the League of Women Voters of Central Vermont.
[T]he League of Women Voters of Vermont is proud to celebrate Women’s Equality Day, Aug. 26, named by then-Rep. Bella Abzug, D-N.Y., in 1971 to commemorate passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
Women make up the majority of the U.S. population (50.8 percent) and account for 47 percent of the labor force. Seventy percent of women in the workforce have children under the age of 18 and 40 percent of working mothers are the sole or primary breadwinner.
While strides have been made, women’s struggle for equality continues, most significantly with economic security and political representation. On this 95th anniversary, the League would like to take a look at Vermont in terms of economic and political equality for women:
• Women earn 83 cents for every dollar paid to men and Vermont ranks first in the nation with the smallest pay gap. It also ranks third with the smallest executive positions gap.
A single parent with two school-aged children needs to earn approximately $30 an hour to have an economically secure income which includes emergency and retirement savings but no extras such as vacations, entertainment, electronics, gifts or meals out.
• Women account for more than 50 percent of minimum wage workers. The average minimum wage worker is a 35-year-old woman with a family; she often works multiple part-time jobs with erratic schedules and limited or no benefits such as vacation, paid public holidays, or paid sick days to care for a sick child, recover from common illness, or seek medical care.
• Women are twice as likely to live in poverty due to lack of affordable child care, housing, and food costs. Vermont is 45th in the nation for affordable housing.
• 41.8 percent of female-led families live in poverty. In 2013, 14.3 percent of working-age women (ages 18-64) had incomes below the poverty line.
• Three in 10 women who work full-time do not make enough money to be financially secure. A single parent with two school-aged children needs to earn approximately $30 an hour to have an economically secure income which includes emergency and retirement savings but no extras such as vacations, entertainment, electronics, gifts or meals out.
• Women occupy more than 40 percent of the state’s 180 legislative seats and this is the highest in the country. However, we are one of only three states that have never sent a woman to either the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives.
It was in 1848 that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, leading figure of the women’s rights movement, said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” There is more — much more — to be done to get us further down the road to equality for ALL women.
