Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Governor Patrick Committed to Elevating Women in Business
Governor Patrick has gained a notable reputation within his administration for ensuring women are being placed into top level executive positions as exhibited by over half of his executive and senior managers being female. The administration is again reinforcing their commitment in helping women gain access to more executive level jobs in government and private organizations through the introduction of a new graduate fellowship initiative for women. The fellowship program will be lead by Rachel Kaprielian, Massachusetts Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development, with the help of Bentley University’s Center for Women in Business. The program aims to place its female fellows into full-salary, high level jobs where they will be set up with a mentor dedicated to providing them with the necessary advice for leadership and success in the male-dominated world of business and government. Many of the logistical aspects of the program are still being discussed, but it is estimated to cost about $1 million dollars for its first year. With that said, the program hopes to start accepting applications by the end of April.
Despite the Governor Patrick’s great strides for advancing women in his own administration, the state of Massachusetts still falls behind many states in terms of women occupying leadership positions. More than half of the state’s top public trading companies do not have female executives, and overall, Massachusetts is ranked 10th out of 18 states surveyed as far as women achieving managerial leadership posts. Similar initiatives and programs have developed out of concern for this disparity; one of them being, the Boston Club which is a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of women by fostering mentoring relationships between qualified women and prominent, successful women in business and private organizations. Furthermore, MassGAP, a program which MWPC is a lead sponsor, has been working since 2002 to increase the number of women appointed by the governor to senior cabinet positions. The Patrick administration’s new initiative, the Boston Club, and MASSGap, all provide hope and avenues for change, yet their existence also remains a testament of the work that still needs to be done to address the evident gender imbalance in business and government.
Read more here: Boston Globe.
