Mentorship as a Pathway to Gender Equity in the Workplace
Gender Equity, Workforce Development
As we celebrate Women’s History Month this March, it is important that we intentionally elevate conversations about gender equity, reflecting on the progress that’s been made and exploring what can be done to further this work. This is the duality that I carried with me during my time as an Echidna Global Scholar at The Brookings Institution, where I explored the question: What are the dreams and aspirations of young women pursuing post-secondary education in India, and how can mentoring programs best support them?
UNDERSTANDING THE LANDSCAPE
Over the past several decades, India has made incredible strides in increasing young people’s access to post-secondary and tertiary education. Thirty years ago, enrollment was at 6%; today, 30% of all post-secondary education aged youth are studying – 19 million young men and 19 million young women are in classrooms across the country. But once they leave the classroom, a stark disparity emerges. While 81% of men with post-secondary education are active in India’s labor force, that number for women stands at only 34%.
In my research, I found that becoming economically empowered individuals who uplift their families and communities is the top priority for a majority of young women. 70 percent of survey respondents in my research said an undergraduate degree was their stepping stone to work.
SO WHY IS THERE A GENDER GAP IN INDIA’S LABOR FORCE?
Young women in India face the triple impact of three intersecting challenges: a skills deficit, a network gap, and restrictive gender norms.
- Skills deficit: Post-secondary curricula rarely addresses eight of the ten skills employers today value most, which include problem-solving, self-management, and working with people.
- Network gap: Young women in India see small numbers of working women as role models around them, and tend to have small professional networks because social norms restrict them from engaging freely.
- Restrictive gender norms: Social norms and family thinking that a woman’s role is primarily that of a caregiver is one of the main factors discouraging female labor force participation in India.
HOW CAN MENTORSHIP PROMOTE GENDER EQUITY?
To explore the ways that mentoring (digital mentoring specifically) can support young women in building webs of relationships and network support, I studied Mentor Together’s digital mentoring program ‘Mentor To Go.’ When the pandemic struck, ‘Mentor To Go’ was just in its second year of program operations, but in the 12 months that followed, over 7,000 young people from over 10 states in India signed up for the program.
Women comprised of 61% of the total enrollment and 70% of all mentorships. Because of the ways that their mentors championed their aspirations, career plans, and goals of economic empowerment, the young women in the program noted significant improvements in realms such as career decision-making, work readiness, self-esteem, self-efficacy, life satisfaction, and emotional regulation.
Our journey to increase India’s female labor force participation has only just begun. To further drive this work, we must encourage state governments to create mentoring policies that will ensure young women have access to high quality mentoring throughout their post-secondary education years and beyond. We must also broaden our lens of what work readiness skills entail to include gender sensitivity, religion and caste sensitivity, green skills, and more. We have to more strategically tap into the immense social capital present in our collective mentor network to make more rich opportunities available to our mentees. And we have explore the capacity of individual mentors to advocate for gender equity and openly discuss the impact of traditional patriarchal norms with families, communities and networks at-large.
Those of us committed to achieving gender equity in the workforce have a long road ahead, but it is not a lonely one if we do so hand in hand with our incredible network of mentors and mentees.