Bloomberg – Want to Empower Female Executives? Pay Up

Women aiming for the C-suite need mentoring from the women who’ve already reached the top, and those mentors should be getting the credit from their employers. Women in C-suites were more likely to have had a mentor at any stage in their careers, Egon Zehnder's 2017 Leaders & Daughters survey found, suggesting that it’s critical to attaining leadership positions. Although studies of the role gender plays in mentoring relationships have yielded mixed results, there is evidence that women do better when their mentors are other women who they can see them as role models. But because women hold just 24 percent of senior positions globally, each one essentially must mentor more than one woman in order for women and men to ultimately achieve parity in leadership positions.

This puts a significant burden on the women who are being called upon to do all of this unpaid mentoring. Women are also often called upon to contribute to the advancement of other women by helping set policy and recruit for their organizations. But they shouldn’t be required to do it without compensation. Such efforts don’t just benefit female employees; they often help organizations repair or bolster their images. And companies that increase their gender diversity improve their financial performance.

Full Story: Want to Empower Female Executives? Pay Up. By Kara Alaimo. 5, May 2019.