This commentary is by Wendy Knight, a member of the Vermont Commission on Women, a board member of the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance, deputy  commissioner of Liquor and Lottery, and former commissioner of the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development. 

In November 2020, I was appointed by Gov. Scott to serve a four-year term on the Vermont Commission on Women, an independent, nonpartisan state commission focused on the advancement of Vermont women and girls. 

Join Change The Story VT, our partnership initiative with Vermont Works for Women, and the Vermont Women's Fund for the launch of the innovative new Leaders for Equity and Equal Pay (LEEP) Toolkit Tuesday, June 8th, noon to 1:00 PM.

The LEEP Toolkit is an easy-to-use, free-to-you resource crafted by experts in the field, to ensure gender and racial pay equity at your organization.

Over the past year, the Change The Story VT initiative partnered with Sadowski Consulting Services and seven Vermont employers to develop the LEEP Toolkit. The LEEP Toolkit includes:

Based on median earnings for full-time, year-round workers, women are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men.  Vermont Commission on Women (VCW) presented the second in a series of Equal Pay Day video podcast conversations on March 24th, the day into the year women need to work before their earnings catch up to those of men in 2020 due to the wage gap.

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Coinciding with legislative action, VCW debuted a new information sheet about the issue of access to menstrual supplies. A bill regarding menstrual products, S.32, was introduced in the Vermont Senate to ensure students have free, immediate access to menstrual supplies within their school restrooms, and another bill, H.260 was introduced in the House to require availability in both public school restrooms and correctional facilities.  Two additional bills, H.53 and S.53 were introduced to remove the non-essential items tax.  Read our new info sheet.
 

Governor Scott has appointed Wendy Knight of Panton to serve a four-year term on the Vermont Commission on Women (VCW), the state’s non-partisan commission working to advance rights and opportunities for women and girls.

Commissioner Knight is a communications and marketing executive with over 20 years of government, corporate and entrepreneurial experience in advertising and marketing, food and beverage, healthcare, media, non-profit, and the publishing industries.

Better pay, respect, opportunities for advancement, and ending sexual harassment: those were some of the reasons that activated the women's movement and workplace rights groups like 9to5 in the 1970s.  PBS Vermont hosted a statewide community conversation following a sneak preview of the film 9to5: The Story of a Movement directed by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, from Independent Lens on January 14, 2021.

The Vermont Commission on Women (VCW) started the new legislative session with a public event examining how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts economic aspects of women’s lives, especially for women of color in our state.