11 percent of Conn. women live in poverty

The data, pulled from a variety of sources, is split up by Connecticut county and major city, and bucketed into economics, health, education, demography and civic participation.

Ten percent of women in Stamford live below the poverty line. Twelve percent of women in the city don’t have a high school diploma. Those women in Stamford who haven’t finished high school earn a median annual salary of just $15,451.

That data is available, perhaps for the first time, thanks to a collaboration between seven women and girlsfocused organizations in Connecticut, which came together to create a firstofits kind data dashboard, just about women.

It’s called the Connecticut Women & Girls Data Platform.

“The whole picture is there,” said CT Data Collaborative Executive Director Michelle RiordanNold. “Normally you’d see these numbers in silos.”

The data, pulled from a variety of sources, is split up by Connecticut county and major city, and bucketed into economics, health, education, demography and civic participation.

The result is data points on women and girls in Connecticut that weren’t previously available.

Statewide, 11 percent of women in Connecticut live below the poverty line. The infant mortality rate among black women in Connecticut is 182.2 percent higher than among white women.

Eight percent of all women in the state don’t have a high school diploma, and those women earn a median annual salary of just $19,198.

Some 47.8 percent of femaleheaded households in Connecticut age 65 and younger are below the ALICE threshold — the minimum income level necessary based on the United Waycalculated Household Survival Budget, an estimate of the total cost of household essentials. Among females aged 65 and older in Connecticut, 52.2 percent are below the ALICE threshold.

“You can’t have good conversations unless you know the numbers,” RiordanNold said.

“The next step is to put the story together. Where are the gaps, where are the things that need to be addressed.”

The hope is that this tool, according to Jenny Steadman of the Hartfordbased Aurora Foundation, gets used by legislators as policy is debated and bills are crafted. She said the dashboard was nearly 18 months in development and cost $12,000, which she called “super cheap.”

Steadman served on Gov. Ned Lamont’s transition team and said that, at the time, there was a need for this sort of data.

“We really want to see this to be an easy access tool for legislators,” she said, agreeing that many of the data points revealed by the dashboard detail what might be considered bad news. “Even though it’s bad news, it’s vital news. If we know where the gaps and problems are then we can build better policy better programs and direct more resources toward women and girls.”

Now that the data is available, Steadman said the goal is to provide context for legislators and organizations that serve women and girls in Connecticut, and to improve data skills at those organizations.

“The next piece is really to produce analyses of the data,” she said.

Steadman and RiordanNold believe this femaleonly data tool may be the first of its kind in the country. Rather than be disappointed that data around the needs of women and girls was so difficult to obtain, Steadman said what matters is that it’s available now.

“I would rather work to build it and have the tool available even if Im frustrated at the need to do that,” she said.

The organizations involved in building the Connecticut Women & Girls Data Platform were Aurora Women and Girls Foundation, Fairfield County’s Community Foundation’s Fund for Women & Girls, Main Street Community Foundation Women & Girls’ Fund, and Community Foundation of Middlesex County Sari A. Rosenbaum Fund for Women & Girls.