Progress for Women is Rooted in Local Initiatives Tied to National and Global Movements

By: MENTOR

Campaigns

Throughout March we are celebrating Women’s History Month! We will be highlighting the important contributions women have made to the mentoring field, as well as featuring stories from female mentors and mentees.

This month, while we celebrate women’s history and reflect on the progress of equality over the course of centuries, one through-line deserves particular attention. From the women’s suffrage movement to building opportunities for career growth, to demanding a sexual harassment-free work environment, progress has come from local efforts on the ground tied to larger national and global movements. While it takes only a few progressively-minded individuals to begin working for change, it is with the momentum of a movement that large-scale cultural shifts begin to take place. But how do you start or join a movement?

In the age of social media, it has become increasingly easy to spread the word about something, but it can be challenging to cut through the noise to those efforts truly making a difference. Building a movement requires an almost artistic dance of storytelling, statistics, and passion that resonates deeply with individuals of varying backgrounds and experiences. It is through the sharing of personal stories, the connection of local organizations and groups, the backing of legitimate research and data, and the dedication of those willing to get the word out that real progress can take effect.

In 2014, a few such dedicated individuals decided to build a movement around the importance of mentoring for women in STEM fields. With a goal of reaching 1 million commitments to mentor by 2020, Million Women Mentors (MWM) set off to reach a base of impassioned volunteers willing to share the importance of mentoring and connect it back to a larger idea. In 2018, the movement has already celebrated 2.3 million commitments to mentor with over 1 million completed mentoring relationships. Though not (yet) scaling to quite the levels of #MeToo or the suffragettes, the reason that Million Women Mentors has seen such success is because it hits the right combination of storytelling, connections, research, and dedication mentioned earlier. The mentoring movement is grounded in hard data and research – we know that mentoring can make a difference for improving the confidence of women to pursue and succeed in STEM fields. The stories are real and local – MWM connects hundreds of local girl-serving organizations to one-on-one mentors (both male and female) across the nation. And the volunteers have relentlessly committed to getting those stories out.

It’s not that local efforts to create mentoring opportunities for young women aren’t valid on their own. It’s that by connecting them to a larger national movement, more people understand the significance, more people want to get involved, and therefore, more young women will get access to the mentors that can propel them into later life success.

Mentoring is only one of the many ways that we can create more and better opportunities for women in STEM and leadership positions. On March 8, International Women’s Day, women from organizations across the globe joined a webinar to share initiatives, efforts, and results for improving the systems, organizations and cultures that encourage women’s success. An overview of this webinar can be viewed here along with the webinar itself. Leaders discussed efforts to increase opportunities for women in the insurance industry, the importance of female role models to influence aspirations, and even data on how women affect the GDP.

“The overarching message is that if we increase women’s participation and retention in the workforce, there would be significant economic benefits as well as societal ones,” said Beth Ann Bovino, US Chief Economist at S&P Global.  S&P Global has reported that we have an opportunity to add 5-10% to nominal GDP by adding more women to the workforce.

“Creating more opportunities for women is not only a women’s movement,” shared Meeta Huggins, Chief Diversity and Talent Acquisition Operations at Ford Motor Company. “We need everyone to be involved. Men, women, people of color, individuals from diverse backgrounds across the nation.”

Building on progress for women is not only a nice-to-have. It’s a national and global imperative that begins with local roots on the ground tied to expansive movements. It is through shared vision and approach that the many successful initiatives for women do not exist in isolation. Ensure your story, whether personal, organizational, or systemic, is tied to a larger movement so that the future of Women’s History Month is about celebrating full equality, not just incremental progress.

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  • MENTOR National and Affiliates will use the information you provide to better inform future publications and keep you up to date with advancements in the mentoring field. For more information, check out our privacy policy.