Latest / Women at Work: Career, Leadership & Modern Work / How Mentorship Gaps Hold Women Back in Mid-Career
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, there's a moment in a woman's career where the mentorship pipeline just… stops. It's not at the entry level — it's mid-career, exactly when promotions to senior management are on the line. Luna: I've heard women describe it as a 'cliff.' You go from having a steady flow of advice and introductions to suddenly being on your own. Lucas: Right. And the data backs that up. The 2024 Women in the Workplace report from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey tracked promotion rates and found that for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 87 women are promoted. And the gap gets worse at higher levels. Luna: So it's not just a pipeline problem — it's a progression problem. Lucas: Exactly. And one of the less talked-about drivers is what I'll call the 'bro-mentor loop.' Senior men tend to informally mentor junior men who remind them of themselves — same alma mater, same golf hobby, same communication style. That informal mentorship then turns into sponsorship: actual advocacy for promotions and high-visibility projects. Luna: Meanwhile, women get assigned formal mentors through corporate programs, which sound good on paper but often lack teeth. Lucas: A Harvard Business Review study from 2023 looked at this directly. They found that women who had a mentor — even a senior mentor — were still promoted at lower rates than men with the same level of mentorship. The key difference wasn't the mentor's seniority. It was whether the mentor actively advocated behind closed doors. Luna: So the mentor was present but not sponsoring. There's a huge gap between 'I'll give you advice' and 'I'll put your name forward for that director role.' Lucas: Exactly. The study called it 'the sponsorship gap.' And it hits women of color hardest. Black women, for example, are significantly more likely to have a mentor who is junior to them, and less likely to have a mentor who has direct influence over succession planning. Luna: That's a structural issue, not just a 'network better' issue. So what's actually being done about it? I know some companies are trying to formalize sponsorship — tying it to performance reviews for senior leaders. Lucas: Yeah, a few have. I know of a case at a large professional services firm — they made sponsorship a core leadership competency. If you're a managing director, part of your evaluation is whether you've actively sponsored at least two diverse candidates for promotion each year. Luna: And did it work? Lucas: Early results showed a 15 percent increase in women and people of color being promoted to partnership over a three-year period. But it required real accountability — not just a checkbox. Luna: But what about women who don't work at firms with those programs? What's the individual play here? Lucas: The most practical research I've seen suggests building peer mentorship networks — a small group of women at a similar career stage who meet regularly to share opportunities, review each other's presentations, and advocate for one another when someone isn't in the room. Luna: I've seen that work. It's less hierarchical but surprisingly effective. There's no power distance, so the advice is more direct. Lucas: And research from the Center for Talent Innovation found that women who have a strong peer network are just as likely to get promoted as women with a senior sponsor — though the path is different. Peers can't open doors the same way, but they can give you the confidence and the prep to walk through them yourself. Luna: I want to pause there — because something you said earlier really strikes me. You mentioned that formal mentorship programs often lack teeth. I think a lot of listeners have been in those programs. You get paired with a senior leader, you have coffee once a quarter, but nothing changes. Lucas: Right. And there's research showing those programs can actually backfire. A 2021 paper in Organization Science found that when formal mentorship programs are mandatory and not well-designed, they can reinforce stereotypes by assigning women to mentors who are less influential, or by creating a 'check the box' mentality. Luna: So what's the better way? If you're an organization, what do you actually do? Lucas: I think the most effective model is to flip it from a program to a practice. That means training senior leaders not just to give advice, but to actively advocate — and then measuring that advocacy. For example, tracking whether a senior leader mentioned a specific woman's name in a promotion committee meeting. Luna: That's measurable. And uncomfortable for some leaders, I imagine. Lucas: It is. But that's the point. If mentorship isn't tied to outcomes, it's just a nice conversation. Luna: Before we move on — I want to acknowledge something. We're able to have this conversation because of listeners who support the show. If today's episode was useful to you and you want to keep it ad-free, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo helps. That really does make a difference. Lucas: Yeah, we don't run ads — that's a deliberate choice. If you want to support that, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo is the place. And now, back to the research. Luna: So Lucas, one thing I'm curious about — does the mentorship cliff hit women at the same career stage across industries? Or is it worse in certain sectors? Lucas: It varies. The women in the workplace report showed that the drop-off is steepest in male-dominated industries like tech and finance. In tech, for example, women at the senior individual contributor level often report having no clear mentor to help them navigate the transition to management. Luna: And in female-dominated fields like education or healthcare, is it different? Lucas: A bit. In those fields, the mentorship gap is narrower at mid-level, but it reappears at the executive level. Women in nursing or teaching might have strong peer mentorship, but when it comes to the superintendent's office or the hospital C-suite, the same sponsorship gap emerges. Luna: So it's not just about having mentors — it's about having mentors who are positioned at the very top. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a harder problem to solve. But there are some interesting experiments. One law firm I read about created a 'sponsor swap' program, where senior partners were randomly assigned to sponsor a junior associate they didn't already know. It forced cross-gender and cross-race sponsorship. Luna: Random assignment — that's bold. Did it work? Lucas: Early data showed that the junior associates who were randomly assigned a sponsor were 30 percent more likely to be staffed on high-profile cases within a year. And the sponsors reported that they had previously been unaware of how much they relied on informal networks. Luna: That's a powerful structural intervention. But it requires senior leaders to accept that their informal networks are biased. That's a hard conversation. Lucas: It is. But I think the data makes it harder to ignore. When 80 percent of senior leaders are white men, and they're mentoring mostly white men, the numbers speak for themselves. Luna: So for a listener who is a mid-career woman right now, feeling that cliff — what's one actionable thing she can do this week? Lucas: I'd say two things. First, identify one senior person — ideally not your direct boss — who has influence over resource allocation. Ask them for 20 minutes of advice on a specific project, not for mentorship. Then follow up with a specific ask: 'If there's an opportunity to present to the leadership team, I'd love to be considered.' That's planting a sponsorship seed. Luna: And the second? Lucas: Join or start a peer mentorship group. Three to five women at a similar level, meeting every two weeks for 30 minutes. Share one concrete ask each time — 'I'm trying to get on this project, does anyone know the decision-maker?' That network can be just as valuable as a senior sponsor. Luna: I love that. It's practical and it doesn't depend on the organization changing overnight. Lucas: And the research shows it works. A study in the Journal of Vocational Behavior found that women who participated in peer mentoring groups reported higher career satisfaction and faster promotion rates — comparable to formal mentorship programs. Luna: So the takeaway isn't 'mentorship is broken.' It's 'mentorship needs to be redefined and distributed differently.' Lucas: Exactly. And the organizations that figure that out — that move from top-down, informal, biased systems to intentional, measured, and inclusive sponsorship — those are the ones that will actually see their female talent make it to the top. Luna: And that's good for everyone. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna.