You are a hard-hitting businesswoman or high-ranking female executive who has managed to avoid falling victim to poverty, res-trictive cultural attitudes, unfriendly workplace policies and biased education steering that generally stop most women on the second or third rung of the proverbial ladder of success.
Give yourself a pat on the back. Have some cake – eat it too
You certainly deserve it. It is no small feat in a world where women still make up roughly two-thirds of the population living below the poverty line. A world where yawning gender employment and wage gaps continue to prevail and top leadership and management roles are still held by men, even in typically women-dominated fields.
But the fact of the matter is, no matter what kind of corner-office view you have earned, you are still marooned in the big, bad sea of male majority. And you are still battling gender-based double-blinds.
A 2012 study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) polled 60 Fortune 500 companies and found that executive committees were made up of just 14% women. In its 2012 census, the Business Women’s Association of South Africa found that the number of women in the working world has increased, but the number of women in senior leadership positions has decreased.
At the end of 2012, there were a measly 12 women CEOs/managing directors and 18 women chairpersons in the South Africa. Furthermore, women comprised only 21.4% of executive managerial positions and 17.1% of director roles in the country, the continent’s supposed economic pioneer. Depressing, yes? Even more shocking is that the same WSJ report discovered that only 18% of the women surveyed harbor CEO aspirations. It found that women were happy to adopt support roles fairly early in their careers and often exited the employment superhighway to fulfill family obligations. Often this happened before they had reached a point at which they could on-ramp again with ease, thus door-stopping their job prospects once and for all. In short, women are dreaming small and aiming low.
It is tempting to leave the business of change to someone else, perhaps understaffed, underfunded agents of women’s economic empowerment. But the fact of the matter is that the responsibility of elevating women into senior positions also lies with those already in senior leadership positions.
There is no time to sit around, waiting to see if a mass overhaul in company philosophy or government policy could lead to more widespread gender diversity in top management roles. Rather, the women who have fought tooth and nail to rise up through the ranks need to help revolutionize individual mindsets.
And how? Through mentorship.
The practice of sharing wisdom and inviting entrants into the workplace into personal networks has been shown to be instrumental in women’s career advancement. Such behavior instills confidence in and offers guidance to the intelligent, credible and bright women further downstream. Dr. Anita Bosch, the leader of the Women in the Workplace research pod at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, explains: “Countless businesswomen battle with psychological hang-ups that can stymie their success. Mentorship helps budding professionals realize their value and chisel out their workplace identity, a point that’s especially important to females.”
Studies have also proven that mentorship allows the up-and-coming to make sense of business culture and set out a strategic career direction.
Take the case of Viola Manuel and her mentee, Simone Daniels. Manuel is the executive director of the Cape Chamber of Commerce, the former head of the Cape IT Initiative, an entrepreneur and founder of her own company, Afrivate. Like so many women before her, Manuel has had to claw her way up the ladder of success without a helping hand reaching down from a higher rung.
“When I was starting my career there were very few role models that were approachable and within reach, and I know that if I’d had someone to lean on I would have been even more successful, had an even more accelerated understating of my industry,” she explains.
It has prompted Manuel to partner with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation as a mentor and take on a mentee in her personal capacity.
Simone Daniels was a final-year chemical engineering student at the University of Cape Town when she met Manuel. At the time, she was prepared to flush four painstaking years of organic chemistry, calculus and general physics down the drain even before she had experienced her first day of work.
“I was done. Dead set on giving it up,” she says emphatically.
After only a few mentorship sessions with Manuel, however, Daniels was not only prepared to continue her coursework, but was motivated to envision herself in a leadership position further down the road.
“She helped me work through what I wanted to do. From talking to her and bouncing ideas off of her, I realized that if I abandoned the degree, I’d likely never be able to go back to engineering, which would be heartbreaking. Now I think my end goal would be to be less of a process engineer and more of a manager,” Daniels explains.
Confident, passionate and not the least bit fazed by the prospect of having to prove herself in a male-dominated industry, Daniels may yet be jaded by the working world, but she is also pointedly aware of a trajectory.
It is a refreshing example of foresight. Although mentorship is not a technical skill, it is a perfect demonstration of the how it facilitates prof-essional and personal development.
Similarly, a relationship between a woman mentor and her mentee can be especially useful for tackling the conversation around how women manage time.
“There are different expectations for women, especially if you want to have a family. Learning how to address that and helping prepare people around you for that is key,” says Manuel.
And she would know. Manuel had three miscarriages before realizing that she needed to quit her job if she wanted to keep her baby. It is an int-ensely personal experience and her willingness to share it with others in similar situations is what makes her such an excellent mentor.
“Mentorship is about forming a connection and building up a relationship of support and trust. It’s about making yourself approachable, so mentees aren’t scared to ask questions,” Manuel explains.
At the end of the day, though, mentorship is a two-way street. Rebecca Pillay, the mentor manager at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, points out that mentors also benefit. “They get to leave a legacy behind, stay relevant and connected with a younger generation, and even easily expand their networks.”
Pillay also stresses that mentorship does not have to be viewed as an all-consuming task.
“There are no formal rules of engagement, but by setting out a contract during your first interaction, you can very clearly lay out the frequency of meetings, address the way you want to communicate with mentees and show commitment on the part of both parties,” she says.
This means that businesswomen who already feel like they have barely enough time to find two matching socks in the morning do not need to feel overburdened by the idea of mentorship.
Pillay recommends only eight- to 10-hour-long meetings throughout the year, which adds up to a single workday.
During that time, she explains, it is important to set out high-value goals, remain authentic by meeting the mentee on their level, and avoid imposing your own expectations on the person you are guiding.
The end goal is to help women in business remove obstacles, give them the confidence to break through glass ceilings and provide them with the courage to detach themselves from sticky floors.
And the greater benefit, aside from the personal gains for both mentor and mentee?
For starters, the World Economic Forum points out that higher levels of growth domestic product per capita when gender equality in the workplace is better realized. Secondly, as Manuel so aptly explains, women put their income back into the economy in a more valuable way than men. Women are more likely to save or, if they have children, invest in them. And a healthier economy often means healthier salaries.
Global investment bank Goldman Sachs has even concluded that by closing the employment gender gap in the Brics nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and next-11 countries (three of which are African), per capita incomes could be pushed 14% higher than current projections by 2020 and 20% higher by 2030.
Of course, it goes without saying that the idea of affecting such macro-level change with a grassroots mentorship movement is a lofty aspiration. But then again, that’s exactly what women need to be doing: dreaming bigger and aiming higher. And as Viola sums up, “Whether we acknowledge it or not, it’s within the grasp of every woman in business to do something to elevate other women. That’s got to be our thinking. We have to find a way to contribute.”
So, ask yourself, are you doing your bit?

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Mentorship: The missing link