As you know, March is Women's History Month.

The city of Louisville's office for Women is aimed at raising the status of women and girls through education, advocacy and legislation.

Our Kelsie Starks sits down with the head of the office to find out what it's all about.

Louisville's Office for Women was first established in 1991.

It's part of the Office of Equity, which was recently elevated to be part of the mayor's office.

Gretchen Hunt is the director of the Office for Women.

Thank you for being here.

A lot has changed since 1991 when it comes to women.

Still a lot of work to do, though.

So tell us why you think this is such an important part of metro government and your overall priorities for this office?

Absolutely.

So it's important for Metro government and for all of community to be focused on gender equity and what we all can do.

Our shared responsibility to raising the status of women and bringing about gender equity in whatever part of government we're in.

And so our priorities for the office are really to strengthen women and thereby strengthening the community.

So this year, we're focusing on strengthening women's leadership and building our capacity to engage more with community.

We are strengthening protective factors against gender based violence, things like domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual assault.

We are also focusing on investing in women and growing women in the child care sector and businesses and supporting women's economic status.

And then we're trying to build capacity across government like like I talked about so that everybody can say, you know, what's the impact of this program on women?

How can we raise the status of women, whether we're in planning or zoning or infrastructure, whatever we're doing?

How can we be a part of the solution.

In the first part?

There was the leadership component.

So one thing that you will have launched is the ambassador program, a leadership program for women and this just started in January.

This is the first group of women to come through here.

So about halfway through with the six month program.

What have been your takeaways on that so far and where do you see this program going forward?

What are the goals?

So these 24 women are rock stars, women and gender diverse individuals.

We have a mixed group and they represent all parts of the city South Louisville, West, Louisville, East Louisville.

And they are diverse racially in age in their experience.

And they are ready to stand up and roll up their sleeves and get to work.

I think this group is the tip of the iceberg of what we're seeing in this city, which is that women feel an urgency to be heard, to be seen and to be engaged.

We have awareness events.

We have the second in a four part series on raising women's economic status, and it's on strengthening the child care infrastructure.

So that's on Tuesday, March 21st.

And it's here in Louisville.

And then we also have an upcoming training that engages that community to address the safety and well-being of black women in our community by addressing domestic violence, bringing in national experts.

So we have a number of events that we want to bring in community partners, faith communities, business leaders, everybody to be a part of the solution.

A little bit more about that program on the 21st.

That is child care infrastructure.

So important right now and what is going to come out of that or what do you hope comes.

Out of that?

Yeah, So we'll have a data presentation by Sara Ehresmann of Hannah works to really give us a level set of where we are in Louisville and in Kentucky and how we need to strengthen that infrastructure because child care is infrastructure.

Without it, women can't work, We can't thrive as a community.

So we're going to be looking at what funding, what investments, what policies and what community support needs to go into really strengthening this so that people can thrive.

Because right now we know that one reason women aren't returning to the workforce, post-COVID, is that lack of childcare and we've got to do something about it.

We hope to raise community sense of urgency around it and.

That it's open to anyone coming up on March 21st to that next Mayor's Night Out event is happening on May the 18th.

Thank you, Kelsey.

The Office for Women's Ambassador program will accept applications for its next leadership training program later this fall.