Monday, July 25, 2005
In The Company of Women - Part 2
Why Mentoring Doesn’t Work for Women
I also didn’t believe that was a common phenomenon until I read another recent article written for Women In Technology International, on the subject of “Making Lemonade”. There it was, in black and white:
The price women pay to play in this male corporate hierarchical “game” is expensive:
Some say that women “at the top” don’t mentor up-and-coming younger women because they have their hands full trying to protect themselves from the sabotage of men AND women in the organization. They’re described as having “arrows in their backs.”
Others observe that women “at the top” only mentor women who are significantly worse off than they are: abused women, battered women, women of the street, and other women deserving great pity. By helping only women at the very bottom of the pecking order, women “at the top” are assured of finding only grateful recipients, and never have to face “sabotage savvy” women and the “Power Dead-Even Rule”.
With mentoring relationships involving only men, the key lesson that it never describes a one-way relationship. It is always a mutually-beneficial deal: each party perceives that he will get more than is given.
Mentoring is about power: dominant and subordinate power, in fact. Mentoring is a temporary superior-to-subordinate relationship which, if it is successful, disappears to the benefit and advancement of both participants.
In a guy-to-guy mentor relationship, the senior one believes he will benefit by working with an up-and-coming super star who is dynamic, creative, hard-hitting, gung-ho and who can add pizzazz to the senior's already bright aura. The junior one, for his part, believes he will benefit by his association with the experienced, valued, seasoned, weathered, senior super star.
Both parties come to the relationship with power, not weakness. The senior is seen as a legitimate source of power which can be enhanced by the junior's contributions. The junior is already seen as an emerging power to be co-opted by the senior's counseling.
In too many instances for women, mentoring is perceived as a situation where each party is expected to give up more than she gets. Too often, mentoring among women is a case of weakness and more sacrifice. The woman at the bottom wants “help”, while the woman at the top wants “help”. Both are running on empty. Thus, mentoring ends up just not being worth the effort on a level comparable to the ways it works best for men in corporate life.
Girl Gangs: Creative Collaborations
The one thing that seems to work is when women’s outrage coalesces around something significant enough for women to band together in a creative collaboration and ignore, temporarily, their concerns with an imbalance of power, relationships or self-esteem. In these cases, the inequities that women see on the outside as a common enemy are greater than the inequities or differences they perceive among themselves.
A prime example is how women of science, engineering, and technology banded together to attack Harvard President, Dr. Lawrence Summers, in almost piranha-like fashion. The technique was effective in many respects: it shed a bright light on the pervasive inequities of salary, tenure, promotions, and recruitment; it also helped establish concrete task forces to document shortages of resources; and in the end $50 Million in funds were allocated to promote and attract women to those fields in Harvard.
So, on the one hand, there is the strategy that Heim/Murphy advocate -- to recognize and “obey” the “Power Dead-Even Rule”. Give the Lady Devil her due: play nice as Carly learned and be ready to rebalance the triangle by giving more to the women than you get.
On the other hand, their other strategy is certainly worth thinking about, too. If women could do a really great job of staying focused on the important common enemies or evils that we all face, perhaps we could rise above the “Power Dead-Even Rule”, build better “girl gangs” and use creative collaborations to Build a Better Doll House for us all.
The “Power Dead-Even Rule” (from In the Company of Women by Pat Heim and Susan Murphy) also explains why so few women mentor other up-and-coming women. How many times have young women tried to find mentors among the female power elite only to learn that that attention is not desired?
Heim/Murphy describe this using another phenomenon, “The Queen Bee Syndrome”, where senior women distance themselves from junior women:
- “Part of the success of women at the very top is their ability to convince men that they are not like other women … denying their status as women.”
I also didn’t believe that was a common phenomenon until I read another recent article written for Women In Technology International, on the subject of “Making Lemonade”. There it was, in black and white:
- "Some executive women believe that being a minority in the executive ranks of the IT industry has only helped them stand out among their male peers . . . us[ing] their underrepresented status as a competitive advantage for themselves. They enjoy being in the minority . . . as they tend to stand out more at meetings and are more likely to be remembered." [Dr. Tammie Page, in an article for Women In Technology International entitled, "Making Lemonade: Preparing For and Sustaining Executive Positions"]
The price women pay to play in this male corporate hierarchical “game” is expensive:
- “Women who achieve success in terms of concrete achievement (but NOT “affiliative success”) often feel empty, lonely, and isolated.“
Some say that women “at the top” don’t mentor up-and-coming younger women because they have their hands full trying to protect themselves from the sabotage of men AND women in the organization. They’re described as having “arrows in their backs.”
Others observe that women “at the top” only mentor women who are significantly worse off than they are: abused women, battered women, women of the street, and other women deserving great pity. By helping only women at the very bottom of the pecking order, women “at the top” are assured of finding only grateful recipients, and never have to face “sabotage savvy” women and the “Power Dead-Even Rule”.
With mentoring relationships involving only men, the key lesson that it never describes a one-way relationship. It is always a mutually-beneficial deal: each party perceives that he will get more than is given.
Mentoring is about power: dominant and subordinate power, in fact. Mentoring is a temporary superior-to-subordinate relationship which, if it is successful, disappears to the benefit and advancement of both participants.
In a guy-to-guy mentor relationship, the senior one believes he will benefit by working with an up-and-coming super star who is dynamic, creative, hard-hitting, gung-ho and who can add pizzazz to the senior's already bright aura. The junior one, for his part, believes he will benefit by his association with the experienced, valued, seasoned, weathered, senior super star.
Both parties come to the relationship with power, not weakness. The senior is seen as a legitimate source of power which can be enhanced by the junior's contributions. The junior is already seen as an emerging power to be co-opted by the senior's counseling.
In too many instances for women, mentoring is perceived as a situation where each party is expected to give up more than she gets. Too often, mentoring among women is a case of weakness and more sacrifice. The woman at the bottom wants “help”, while the woman at the top wants “help”. Both are running on empty. Thus, mentoring ends up just not being worth the effort on a level comparable to the ways it works best for men in corporate life.
Girl Gangs: Creative Collaborations
The one thing that seems to work is when women’s outrage coalesces around something significant enough for women to band together in a creative collaboration and ignore, temporarily, their concerns with an imbalance of power, relationships or self-esteem. In these cases, the inequities that women see on the outside as a common enemy are greater than the inequities or differences they perceive among themselves.
A prime example is how women of science, engineering, and technology banded together to attack Harvard President, Dr. Lawrence Summers, in almost piranha-like fashion. The technique was effective in many respects: it shed a bright light on the pervasive inequities of salary, tenure, promotions, and recruitment; it also helped establish concrete task forces to document shortages of resources; and in the end $50 Million in funds were allocated to promote and attract women to those fields in Harvard.
So, on the one hand, there is the strategy that Heim/Murphy advocate -- to recognize and “obey” the “Power Dead-Even Rule”. Give the Lady Devil her due: play nice as Carly learned and be ready to rebalance the triangle by giving more to the women than you get.
On the other hand, their other strategy is certainly worth thinking about, too. If women could do a really great job of staying focused on the important common enemies or evils that we all face, perhaps we could rise above the “Power Dead-Even Rule”, build better “girl gangs” and use creative collaborations to Build a Better Doll House for us all.
# posted by ChampionBoards.com @ 3:43 PM 
