Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / Why Women Leaders Are Asked to Be Mentors More Than Men
Transcript
- Lucas: Let's start with a number: a 2023 study in the Harvard Business Review found that women in senior leadership roles receive roughly 50 percent more mentorship requests than men at the same level. Luna: Fifty percent more? That's a huge discrepancy. Lucas: It is. And here's the kicker — the same study showed that when women decline those requests, they're rated as significantly less helpful and less likable than men who say no. So there's a penalty either way. Luna: So it's a double bind. You're asked more often, and you're punished for saying no. That's what some researchers call the 'mentorship tax.' Lucas: Exactly. And it's a tax that compounds over time. The study tracked senior women at three Fortune 500 companies. The average time spent on informal mentoring per week was about two hours for women, versus under an hour for men at the same level. Luna: Two hours a week doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up. Over a year, that's over a hundred hours — more than two and a half weeks of working time. Lucas: Right. And those hours come out of the same day where they're also expected to deliver on their core role, manage a team, and network upward. The mentorship work is largely invisible, uncompensated, and it rarely shows up in performance reviews. Luna: Which is ironic because companies constantly say they want more mentorship, especially for junior women and people of color. But they're not accounting for who's actually doing that labor. Lucas: And who's getting credit for it. One of the more striking findings in that HBR study was that men who spent time mentoring were actually more likely to get promoted. For women, the opposite was true — more mentoring time correlated with slower advancement. Luna: That's the part that's really frustrating. Men get rewarded for being generous with their time, women get penalized for the same behavior. Lucas: The researchers offered a few explanations. One is that women are often mentoring other women, and those relationships don't carry the same sponsorship weight. Another is that when women mentor, it's seen as 'nurturing' — which is expected, not exceptional — so it doesn't earn them the same career capital. Luna: And then there's the 'office housework' angle. Mentorship becomes another form of the administrative and emotional labor that women disproportionately take on. Lucas: Let's bring in a concrete example. There's a VP of product at a midsize tech company — let's call her Sarah — who found herself saying yes to almost every mentorship request because she remembered how hard it was to find mentors as a junior woman. Luna: That's a really common story. Many senior women feel a sense of obligation to 'lift as they climb.' Lucas: Right. But after a few years, Sarah realized she was spending nearly five hours a week on informal mentoring — coffee chats, reviewing resumes, advising on career moves. She started tracking it, and when she brought the data to her manager, the reaction was basically, 'Well, that's great that you're developing talent, but your product metrics are slipping.' Luna: So her manager didn't see the mentoring as part of her job, even though the company promoted mentorship as a value. Lucas: Exactly. She ended up setting some boundaries — she created a structured group mentoring session once a month, and she started redirecting one-on-one requests to that group. She also began saying no more often, but with a referral: 'I can't meet, but I suggest you talk to so-and-so in marketing.' Luna: That's smart. It passes the baton without just saying no. Lucas: But here's the thing — even with that approach, she told the researchers that she still felt guilty. And she noticed that male colleagues who declined requests didn't seem to carry that same guilt. Luna: That internalized expectation is real. We're socialized to be helpers, and it's hard to unlearn that. Lucas: So what can women actually do? The HBR authors recommend a few strategies. First, treat mentorship requests like any other work task — allocate time for it, and track it. Second, batch your mentoring into specific office hours or group sessions rather than ad-hoc coffee chats. Luna: And third? I think they also said to leverage the 'two-minute rule' — if a request can be answered in two minutes, do it immediately. But if it's more involved, schedule it. Lucas: Yes, that was in there. But there's also a bigger structural piece: organizations need to recognize mentorship as work. Some companies are starting to include it in performance reviews or even tie it to compensation. Luna: That's the real fix, isn't it? Not asking women to be better at boundary-setting, but changing the system so the burden is shared. Lucas: Absolutely. One thing we haven't mentioned is the role of sponsorship versus mentorship. Sponsorship — where a senior person actively advocates for a junior person's promotion — tends to have a bigger career impact than mentorship. And women are less likely to have sponsors. Luna: So the mentorship tax is doubly damaging — it eats up time that could be spent building sponsor relationships, and it reinforces the idea that women are helpers, not power brokers. Lucas: There's a really good quote from one of the study authors. She said: 'When women mentor, they're meeting an expectation. When men mentor, they're going above and beyond.' And that gap in perception is at the heart of this. Luna: It's a classic case of the double standard baked into workplace culture. And it's not just about individual behavior — it's about how we value different kinds of work. Lucas: Let's zoom out for a second. We've talked a lot about the burden on women. But what about the men? If men are asked less often, they're also missing out on the developmental benefits of mentoring. Luna: That's a good point. Mentoring helps you see your own expertise more clearly, it builds your network, and it makes you a better leader. So men who aren't mentoring are losing that too. Lucas: A few companies are trying to address this by formally assigning mentors and tracking the distribution. One financial services firm we've read about now publishes data on mentorship hours by gender and level, so managers can see who's carrying the load. Luna: Sunlight is a great disinfectant. When people see the numbers, it's harder to ignore the imbalance. Lucas: And on the individual level, if you're a senior woman, one practical step is to ask yourself: 'Is this mentorship relationship actually going somewhere? Or is it a one-way drain?' A good mentor relationship should be energizing, not just draining. Luna: I want to circle back to the guilt piece, because I think it's really important. Even knowing the data, many women still feel they 'should' say yes. And I think part of that is because we're told mentorship is how we pay it forward. Lucas: Right. And the system kind of depends on that guilt. It's a form of unpaid labor that women are socialized to accept. Recognizing that it's a systemic issue — not a personal failing — is the first step. Luna: So if a listener is a senior woman feeling overwhelmed by mentorship requests, what's the one thing you'd tell her? Lucas: I'd say: treat your time like the scarce resource it is. You don't have to say yes to every request. And if your organization doesn't value mentorship, consider whether you want to keep giving it away for free. Luna: That's blunt but fair. And for organizations listening — and I know some do — the message is clear: if you want mentorship to happen, you need to build it into the job, not just the culture. Lucas: One last thought. The HBR study came out in 2023, but I think the mentorship tax has only grown since then, especially with more people working remotely. Informal mentorship is harder to come by when you're not in the office, so the requests that do come through carry even more weight. Luna: And women are still the ones getting those requests more often. So the gap might be widening. Lucas: Which is why we need to talk about it. The first step to solving a problem is naming it. And the mentorship tax is a very real, very costly burden on women leaders. Luna: And on the organizations that depend on them. Alright, Lucas, before we wrap, anything you want to add? Lucas: Just that I hope listeners will look at their own mentorship habits — whether they're giving or receiving — and think about who's doing the work. If you're a senior person, maybe ask yourself: could I be sharing this load? And if you're a junior person, consider reaching out to male mentors too, not just the women. Luna: That's a great note to end on. Thanks, everyone, for listening.