The New Guard Weighs In on Women in Leadership

Raquel Lacey Nelson knows being a woman manager these days isn’t nearly the daily battle it was for her mother’s generation. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges. "I saw at a distance what a woman leader I used to work under went through," she says. "Is it easy street? Absolutely not."

The 34-year-old sales director at frozen-food outfit Schwan Food Co., based in Marshall, Minn., is a part of the company’s senior-executive development program — a group of 30 or so high-potential leaders. Ms. Lacey Nelson says she’s often the only woman in the room, but feels her ideas are heard and her contributions appreciated by most male colleagues.

But that’s not always the case with women managers a few rungs up the ladder, she says: "They can be very threatened or intimidated by younger women who are advancing. But life is changing and there will be many people retiring, so women in their 30s are going to rise a lot quicker than the women before them."

By Jennifer Merritt

Full Story: http://www.careerjournal.com/myc/diversity/20071119-merritt.html?cjcontent=mail