Mentors vs. Sponsors and the Ambition Gap Myth

Do women lack ambition? Not on your life.

Women want to succeed, yet even when they do "all the right things" Catalyst has found that they earn less and progress more slowly than men. The fact that some women adjust their career advancement strategies after crashing into institutional barriers is a rational response to inhospitable workplaces. It is not an example of a lack of ambition.

Catalyst has been studying women's ambition for nearly a decade. Our 2004 report, Women and Men in U.S. Corporate Leadership, surveyed nearly 1000 senior-level employees who shared similar backgrounds and characteristics. We found that women aspired to be CEO in equal proportions as men. But the women -- to a much greater extent than men -- ran up against barriers, namely exclusion from informal networks, stereotyping, and a lack of role models. Likewise, our report, Leaders in a Global Economy, found that women and men have similar work values. The problem is this: men find workplaces more aligned with their values, women don't.

What's changed since 2004? Not much -- women remain ambitious, but barriers still block their paths. And with few exceptions, women's leadership is stalled in corporate America.

The Myth of the Ideal Worker, the latest report in our series on high potential employees, examined the career advancement strategies of thousands of MBA graduates from top schools around the world and the impact of these strategies on their careers. Women and men were equally represented in the two most proactive groups, indicating that ambition ran high among both genders. But being proactive paid off more in promotions and pay for the men.

In Pipeline's Broken Promise, we found that among MBA grads who aspired to be CEO or senior executives, women progressed more slowly than men. And parenthood, industry, and previous experience didn't explain the gender gap. The leadership and pay gaps balloon over time, suggesting that the problem lies with the system, not the women.

So what is the problem? Cascading Gender Biases, Compounding Effects revealed how gender biases are unintentionally embedded in talent management systems -- biases that exclude those who don't fit the male leadership model. Addressing these biases and rooting them out at the source are better ways to tackle inequality than blaming the women. Smart organizations are proactively addressing the barriers women face and are reaping the rewards.

Our research has pointed to one more powerful solution: sponsorship. Sponsors advocate for you from behind closed doors and ensure you're visible when opportunities arise. The problem is that many women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. Some companies are recognizing this and are instituting formal sponsorship programs for women. At the same time, individuals are taking the lead on this front without waiting for a formal program to kick in by actively seeking sponsorship and being a sponsor to others, especially talented women who deserve it. This is one proven way to help narrow gender gaps.

The misguided assumption that women are less ambitious than men puts companies at risk of inadvertently underutilizing talented women and overlooking, or outright dismissing them, for key roles. This is a real loss for companies. Organizations need to step up and clear a path for women's success.

Women are ambitious. But systemic barriers in the workplace mean that ambition, even when coupled with talent, isn't always enough.

 

Follow Ilene H. Lang on Twitter: www.twitter.com/catalystinc

Comments

[edtastic]

05:45 PM on 01/10/2012

The assumption that women are at a disadvantage will continue to cause us to ignore the big elephant in the room which consist of women getting 50% more degrees at the graduate and undergraduate level. What are we doing to tackle that disparity which has been growing over the past 30 years? Young single women already earn more than young men in nearly all population centers, single professional childless women in general out earn men by a substantial margin, so what disparities are we really trying to fix? I think some women are engaging in self serving victimization to gain an advantage in a competitive environment instead of honestly looking at the challenges facing people in general.

If women keep working to advance women alone then men would be wise to do the same for themselves since men doing well is not a given nor does it showing up in the huge and growing education gender gap. When men do poorly we hear silence but when women struggle with simply getting ahead in a job they already do well we suppose to stop everything to help them. The princess has found her pea.

[Ebelskiver]

05:58 PM on 01/10/2012

Young single women only out earn men because they have a degree and the men don't. If you put young single women up against a young single man with the same degree then those stats look much different. Stop relying on questionable studies to advance your anti-feminist agenda. Nowhere in this article does it mention that women should only help other women advance. It's telling that you interpret the article in this way because if you didn't then you wouldn't be able to play the victim card that you are so fond of accusing women of using.

[Grinling Gibbons]

07:07 PM on 01/10/2012

"Young single women already earn more than young men in nearly all population centers, single profession­al childless women in general out earn men by a substantia­l margin, so what disparitie­s are we really trying to fix? "

So all the millennia of female oppression has been reversed! All women have to do is get a college education, move to a big city, never get married, never have kids and never get any older than 30! What a sweet deal!

[Curt Rice]

09:59 AM on 01/10/2012

Wonderful blog entry, Ilene. I wrote some about the myth of non-ambition, too, in:

There are only 3 reasons women don't make it to the top
http://curt-rice.com/2011/11/13/there-are-only-3-reasons-women-dont-make-it-to-the-top/