Worcester Business Journal

Feeling MARGINALIZED Central Mass. businesswomen who've sat in positions of power say they don't get the same automatic credibility as men, even if the dynamic is slowly changing 6 Worcester Business Journal | February 19, 2018 | wbjournal.com BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor I nterrupted, ignored, made to feel like they don't exactly belong. "I've come across it when I won't even get eye contact during a meeting," said Kate Sharry, the owner and president of Group Benefits Strategies in Auburn. "That by itself can be intimidating." A Worcester Business Journal study into the gender makeup of the leadership in 75 Central Massachusetts organiza- tions – detailed in the Feb. 5 issue – showed women held 33 percent of senior executive positions and seats on boards of directors/trustees, but that number was skewed by a handful of social service nonprof- its. At the region's 17 public companies, 8 percent of senior executives and 16 percent of board members were women in their latest reporting year; both of those rates are below the state and national averages. For the women in Central Massachusetts who do hold positions of power in business, they are often one of only a handful of women – if not the only one – in the room for important meetings and in executive offices, where they feel they aren't treated the same as their male counterparts. "Some generations are just not used to seeing women in power positions," said Susan West Engelkemeyer, the president of Nichols College in Dudley since 2011 and one of the first two female deans at Ithaca College earlier in her career. "I do think it's changing." A slow-changing environment Susan Mailman took over from her father as the president and owner of Coghlin Electrical Contractors and Coghlin Network Services in Worcester in 2003. She had worked at the businesses since 1985, but still said fitting in among those in the industry hasn't come easy. "If I'm a son in one of those business, you're more a part of the club," she said. Only 23 percent of women in a 2017 study by New York City management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. said their company's management addresses gender-biased behavior as it happens. Those who study the issue attribute the slow-changing ways to an insular male-dominated environment where women are still looking to make inroads. The global advocacy group Women in the Boardroom, based in New York City, found in a survey last year that 90 percent of women felt that The Boardroom Gap SECOND IN A THREE-PART SERIES Laurie Leshin "There were many, many meetings when I was the only woman in the room. You didn't notice it at first, but after a while, you think, 'Really?'" P H O T O / E D D C O T E Kate Sharry, owner and president of Group Benefits Strategies in Auburn

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