The highest-ranked woman in the Massachusetts State Police force did not feel welcomed when she joined the academy more than 20 years ago, considering she wasn’t very tall and she had only studied journalism.
“When you enter the academy as a woman, 5-feet tall — with no prior police experience and no prior military experience — there’s a sense of, ‘What are you doing here?’” Massachusetts State Police Major Kathryn Downey said.
Downey was one of two women who graduated in 2005 from a 137-person recruit training class. She described it as a “very solitary experience, feeling like you really didn’t have a support system when you were there.”…