Please share your experiences regarding mentors for women

It’s encouraging to see that my posting yesterday prompted a dribble of renewed activity on a LinkedIn discussion on female mentors that I launched in Oct 2010.  The platform is an interesting and fun group called Girls Who Print, moderated by Mary Beth Smith of Texas.  To bring you up to speed, I’ve quoted how I began the discussion below:

   

Wanted: Girl success stories

 Does anyone have career-advancement stories with female heroines to share? Or female survival tactics for the recession or glass ceilings?

I’ve just finished reading through all 268 interesting entries posted to Mary Beth’s “And you are… ??" discussion since she launched it in May 2009. Back then she wrote: “Who knew guys would accept an invite to something called “Girls Who Print”??!!

Similarly, it was no surprise to me when I first joined Girls Who Print that my female publisher, Sara Young, was already a member. But it also turns out that my (male) editor at PrintAction, Jon Robinson, is a closet feminist: when editing my [Sept 2010] column (see https://www.box.net/shared/15ln6t43jf), Jon didn't just tolerate my long account of how Ms. Kris Bovay rose through the ranks to become chair of BIA; he even agreed with me that female professionals need to read more of that kind of stuff. Kris has forged an impressive career, although both her family responsibilities and the recent recession required her to change course radically. I hope the widespread supporters of Girls Who Print will exploit this space to share other, uniquely female, path-to-success stories.

Journalist, Chris Matthews (a male whose beat is politics), wrote: “It’s hard getting somewhere without a map. It’s the same reason so many of us love biographies. They show us how others have gotten where we want to go. If you want to get somewhere, study the routes others have taken.”

That goes double for women. Practitioners and theorists agree that in order to succeed professional women need to form the same kind of mentoring relationships that have enabled their male counterparts to advance. But studies show that women in corporate settings have often found mentoring relationships with other women unsatisfying: senior women report feeling either unqualified, discounted, or overburdened as mentors, while junior women complain that senior women are unreceptive or competitive in dealing with them as protégés.

I’m betting that this forum could turn out to be the missing antidote.

To review or make subsequent contributions to this discussion, please refer to the following link:

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=1969742&type=member&item=31566959&qid=846c47d6-8aab-428d-9304-1cbf6507f12d&trk=group_most_popular-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egdr_1319731197620_1%2Egmp_1969742%2Eamf_1969742_41605696%2Egmp_1969742

Here’s hoping not only that more conversation will ensue on line about the important topic of mentoring females, but also that it will somehow yield concrete practical benefits for professional women. 

Why do women flunk at mentoring?

Sadly, regarding women mentoring women, I can recall too many instances in my own professional life that mirrored  Kerry Hannon’s experience, as she described it for Forbes yesterday when commenting on a new LinkedIn survey.  The survey shows that too many women are not being or have not been mentored by other women.  Hannon attributes the problem not only to the fact that too few women hold senior positions, but also to the fact that the behaviour of women executives too often ranges from declining to support other women to outright slapping other women down.  Hannon writes:  “They were very protective of their much fought for status.  Heels high, nails sharp.”  What are your past experiences when you’ve tried to enlist other women as mentors?

 http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryhannon/2011/10/25/boomer-women-flunk-mentoring-new-linkedin-survey/

2 new resources on how women are faring professionally & globally

A couple of interesting links I’ve discovered this week:
One is a new study by Catalyst revealing how women are assessed differently for promotion than men.  Evidently, women seeking to advance professionally need a proven track record, while men get promoted based on their perceived "potential".  http://www.torontosun.com/2011/10/13/women-blameless-in-pay-inequity-study

The second is “Newsweek’s” recent ranking of the world’s 10 best and 10 worst countries in which to be a woman.  Although they ranked Canada the world’s third best country for females in terms of justice, health, education, and economics, we still scored low in giving women political power.  You can found out whether and where your own country placed on the lists at:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/22/women-winning-map.html
More fascinating details on the status of women globally at: 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/galleries/2011/09/18/the-best-places-to-be-a-woman-photos.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2011/09/18/best-and-worst-countries-for-women-from-iceland-to-the-u-s-to-pakistan-and-afghanistan.html

Women still missing from senior management roles in Canada (sigh)

According to a report released yesterday by The Conference Board of Canada, the presence of Canadian women in senior management positions has stalled in the past two decades. Between 1987 and 2009, the proportion of women in senior management has changed little—men are still more than twice as likely to hold a senior executive position.

Anne Golden, President and CEO of The Conference Board of Canada, said:  “Increasing women’s representation at the senior level is not simply a matter of justice or fairness—although it is that. And it is not simply a “women’s issue.” Companies that fail to integrate women’s perspectives into their high-level decision making risk losing market share, competitive advantage, and profits. We already know what to do. Now we simply need to do it.”

A news release from The Conference Board dated yesterday added that the few women who rise to senior levels often attract substantial media attention, which may give readers the false impression that barriers to women’s advancement are a thing of the past.

Besides quantifying the current underrepresentation of women in management positions, the report (called Women in Senior Management: Where Are They?) also enumerates some of the challenges women still face in the workplace and suggests practices for overcoming the barriers.

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/newsrelease/11-08-31/Women_Still_Missing_In_Action_From_Senior_Management_Positions_In_Canadian_Organizations.aspx