Mentoring to Support Women’s Leadership

Abstract

Mentoring has become an increasingly common form of assistance used by development partners to support women’s leadership in Pacific Island contexts. This Policy Brief highlights the need for mentoring programs to be responsive to mentees’ goals, learning processes and local contexts. Currently, the design and implementation of mentoring programs in developing contexts are often underwritten by four key assumptions: that a mentor from a developed country can effectively and sustainably mentor a woman from a developing country context; that mentoring programs based outside a mentee’s specific workplace (and country) context can transcend local structural barriers to women’s leadership; that mentoring serves the same kinds of purposes in all contexts; and that mentoring methodologies used in corporate contexts can be implemented in developing contexts. These assumptions will be explored in this Policy Brief. In order to more strongly align mentoring with meaningful policy impact in a development context, we propose the following evidence-based recommendations: 1. Complement mentorship programs with other developmental leadership programs, recognising the limitations of programs focused only on change driven by individuals. 2. Facilitate opportunities for women to find their own context-relevant mentors. 3. Match clearly, at the outset of the program, a woman’s leadership objectives with the mentoring purpose. 4. Provide ongoing support to develop and strengthen mentoring relationships. 5. Support mentors to critically challenge and support the leadership aspirations and capacities of mentees within their sphere of influence. 6. Recognise the long-term and transitional nature of mentoring relationships.