Women trailblazers celebrated during Women’s History Month

GLASGOW, Ky. – March is National Women’s History month and local women are being recognized by their communities for trail blazing a path for other women in their workplace.

A pioneer in her field, Mica Wood Pence, is the very first female judge in Barren County.

According to Wood Pence, any gender can do what she does, but being a female does have its challenges sometimes.

“A lot of time, men will get the automatic respect when they are in any position of authority, and I feel like, as a female, you still have to earn it a little bit more. You are not automatically going to get it. A lot of times, when people come in front of me, they’ll call ‘honey’ and ‘sweetie,’ not that that offends me, but they are not going to do that to Judge Alexander or Judge Pendleton,” said Wood Pence said of her male counterparts.

Jennifer Arbogast is the very first female chief of police in Glasgow and one of only a few female police chiefs in the state.

She has spent 17 years serving Glasgow, the past two as chief.

According to Arbogast, it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman in policing, it matters who you are as a person.

“We look at it as, who can do the job. Even though the obstacles that I had to work, I still did it and the main thing is you just don’t give up. Male or female, it’s who can do the job,” said Arbogast.

One woman, Amanda Coniglio, is the first and only female officer serving in the Cave City Police Department.

She has served in other agencies before coming to Cave City back in August of 2019 accruing a total of 25 years serving and protecting.

“I worked for a large agency in Florida, where I retired from and it was nothing to see half of a squad being females, you know, and then you come up here, and you will see a whole agency that might only have one. So I would like to see more females, you know, in the smaller agencies,” said Coniglio.

“You can be anything that you want to be. You just have to work hard and have confidence and faith in yourself,” said Wood Pence.

And there are so many other trailblazers in south central Kentucky, like Patsy Sloan, the first female elected official and first female mayor of Bowling Green.

Each of these women who spoke to WNKY encourages people of all genders to work hard toward their goals, and don’t give up.