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Boston Club report: Women play major roles at local nonprofits

Just over one-third of board members for Massachusetts nonprofits, or 35 percent, are women, and 20 percent of the state’s nonprofits are headed by women chief executives, according to a new report from the Boston Club, an organization of senior executive and professional women.

By way of comparison, women held just under 13 percent of the seats on the boards of directors at the state’s largest publicly traded companies in 2012, the group said, and 9.9 percent of the top executives at those companies were women.

For the past decade, the Boston Club has been taking an annual census of female executives and board members at the state’s largest publicly traded companies.

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And now, because of the importance of nonprofits to the local economy, the Boston Club has decided for the first time to take a separate census of women at nonprofits. The club examined more than 142 nonprofits; only one had no women on its board. In its 2012 report on publicly traded companies, 35 of the top 100 companies had no women board members, according to Boston Club numbers.

Chris Reidy

Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.