Vermont ranks No. 1 for narrowing the gender-wage gap, according to a recent study, but there’s still work to be done to reach equity and to improve the gap for other other marginalized groups.

Vermont women are not yet on par with what men make, the gender wage gap is the smallest in the Green Mountain State versus the rest of the country, according to a National Women’s Law Center report based on data from a 2019 American Community Survey. The median women made was $46,616 versus men at $51,212 per year. That was a wage gap of 9 cents per dollar made. The U.S. average was 18 cents per dollar.

Historically women have been underpaid when compared to their male working counterparts. And, pay gaps are even greater for Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people versus their white colleagues, on average. For BIPOC workers, that gap was narrowing until 2000 when it began to widen again due to the acceleration of income inequality in the U.S.

Change the Story Vermont and the Vermont Commission on Women want businesses to take a hard look at their pay rates, so the organizations created a toolkit to help companies evaluate their pay structure and make changes.

“Gender and racial pay equity assessments are rapidly becoming standard practice for large companies in the U.S., but there hasn’t been much work done to standardize methods and make them easily accessible or affordable for smaller companies (and well over 90% of the companies in VT are small),” a newsletter from the Vermont Commission on Women states.