I never had a mentor
Women, mentorship, and supporting each other
The Babblery is a radio show that features conversations about Earth's most perplexing species: us. Each month, I invite my guest to be a visiting translator at our modern Tower of Babble, helping others understand a little piece of how we develop, interact, love, fight, and live.
I’m making the final touches on The Babblery interview with Sharon Sewell-Fairman, CEO and President of the nonprofit Women Creating Change. During our conversation, Sharon talked a lot about mentorship. The organization’s mission is, in essence, mentorship. But Sharon also talked about the people who mentored her.
While I listened to her words over and over during the editing process, I wondered why I never had a mentor and what effect that lack has had on my life.
Mentorship didn’t fit with rugged individualism
I don’t remember coming across the word “mentor” in my school, college, and early career years. There was an emphasis on individualism, on toughing it out, on climbing the ranks… but mostly for boys. Not a single teacher reached out to me in high school. When my “counselor” chided me that my mother’s excuse notes simply said, “Susana was at home yesterday,” she didn’t ask why my mother’s notes didn’t say I was sick. If she had, perhaps I’d told her about the pointlessness of what I was doing, the confusion of being a “smart girl” whose teachers ignored her, or what I was really doing at home: reading, playing music, and frankly, playing hooky.
If she had asked why I stayed at home, maybe I wouldn’t have dropped out of high school.
My undergrad advisor was a woman, a brilliant woman amongst mostly male colleagues. It’s possible she tried to mentor me, but I was so deep in my shell that all I remember is cringing when she corrected me about a language group. Or maybe, not having been mentored herself, she thought I needed some toughening up. I needed to find my own way like she did. I don’t know; since I didn’t expect to be mentored, I didn’t ask.
My first boss was a woman. All I remember about her is that she seemed to find me irritating at best. (And hey, I won’t disagree with her; I probably was.)
Mentorship wasn’t part of women’s lives
We often talk about work “culture,” and I have to remind myself that when I was in college, women were only starting to figure out how to fit into a work culture. Although statistically about 50% of women said they worked part- or full-time the year I entered college, they were (as many still are now to a certain extent) clustered mostly in low-paying caregiving jobs. And the women coming up in the corporate world were working hard at that time to fit in (remember shoulder pads and bow-blouses?).
In a way, the incorporation of intentional “mentorship” in business was in its infancy for men at that time, also, as research in the 70s and 80s pointed toward the importance of these relationships not just in youth, but in maintaining a successful workforce.1 So women’s entry into this world came in the midst of a system being developed to suit a culture that they hadn’t previously been part of.
But things were starting to change.
Sometimes you have to say it out loud to make it so
The 1988 film “Working Girl” depicted Sigourney Weaver as the female boss who was anything but a mentor as she crushed her spike heel on the female competition. The film ends, though, with our working girl, played by Melanie Griffith, being given the corner office. When her female assistant offers coffee, our “girl” steps into the mentor role and tells her assistant, essentially, that her role as boss isn’t to keep the underling down; it’s to lift her up.
“Working Girl” is a silly movie written and directed by men, and a man in a clearly supporting role, Harrison Ford, got top billing. (This is extra-egregious given that the film is even named after the woman!) But at the same time, it seemed to mark the beginning of the revival of the mentor as a formal role, not just something that happened on the golf course. The film literally ends with our working girl becoming a female mentor of other women.
Finding our voices
Sharon Sewell-Fairman was born in rural Jamaica and came to the US as an 11-year-old. She said that her upbringing in a “speak only when spoken to” culture held her back for many years—until her mentors helped to draw her out.
I realized by using my voice, I represent other women of color. But also I began to understand that by using your voice, you can be a catalytic force in driving change, for social justice, economic justice, and other areas.
It’s become a cliché in fantasy stories that you can’t name the villain, lest you give him power. But Harry Potter, for example, takes that power back by saying the name over and over, clearly and loudly. I see women’s early years, post-second-wave, as a time when we were afraid to name the villain, the lack of support that we felt. But then we, like Harry, realized that we could take that power for our own.
Mentorship can’t happen when some are excluded from mentoring spaces
In the recent past, the home was the domain of women. The women who worked outside the home tended to be in employment where there was no possibility of advancement—housekeepers, factory workers—thus no need for mentorship. When women first started to step into the world of formal work outside of their traditional roles, they found themselves in male spaces.
One fight I remember clearly centered around clubs, most specifically private golf courses. Women argued that not only were business deals made on the course, and thus they were left out, but the role of golfing in many businesses was, in effect, a mentoring opportunity. A young man who plays a round with his manager gets to literally play on a level field. A young woman wasn’t even allowed to cross the threshold.
Creating our own spaces
I believe that formal mentoring may well have died on the golf course if it weren’t for women waking up and realizing that “having it all” wasn’t going to happen. Women needed support. So when women stepped into the corporate space, all of the informal gatherings that were, in effect, mentoring, started to be formalized.
One step toward solving problems that arise from integration is, paradoxically, the claiming of positive spaces of our own. I’ve always believed that there’s nothing wrong with gender-segregated spaces, as long as membership in them isn’t required for advancement in public life. Women having time to speak openly, to share their experiences, and to offer solutions is what mentorship is all about.2 That’s what men had in business for all of modern life before women stepped into the public sphere. So now we have to figure out, step by step, how to work in ways that benefit everyone. And part of that is women formally stepping up to mentor other women.
And then reintegrating as a whole
I loved hearing that one of Sharon’s important mentors was a man. There is no reason why, in most spaces and in most situations, women and men should have drastically different needs. She tells the story that this boss had to ask her to go to a conference in his place, and that he assured her that she could do it. His belief that she had the skills gave her the will to power through a new experience.
Yes, we can—sí, se puede
Yes, we can do this. But that old rugged individualism? It didn’t work. We aren’t John Wayne out on the range. We live in a complex society in which no single person can perform all the tasks needed to keep it going.3 Women—and men—need to recognize those in need of mentoring and give them a chance. I may have looked defiant as hell back then in the 80s with my heavy eyeliner, piercings, and black clothes. But really, I was just a person who didn’t know which way to go. I wish someone had asked me if I needed something; not directions, but maybe some conversation and support.
I wish I’d had a mentor.
The Babblery can use your support. Please comment on, like, and share this post. Recommend our publication to your friends. Become a paid subscriber. Buy us a coffee. Buy Wally and Tabitha some cat food. Listen to KSQD. Be awesome and carry on.
If you enjoy podcasts, please subscribe to the Babblery on your favorite podcast platform, including Spotify, Amazon, TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/history-mentoring-western-world-from-homer-harvard-business/
And yes, modern gender politics has made gender-segregated spaces all the more fraught, but I’m not going to fight that battle today. In fact, I don’t take part in that battle. I’m sitting up on a hillside watching the fight and wondering why it is that people who are disadvantaged by the structure of society so often go at each other rather than spending their energy to force a restructuring!
Great—important—piece, Suki! I too never had a mentor or that's how it felt at the time. Though, in looking back, there were people, older adults, teachers, at least kind of keeping an eye out for me. What I needed was so much more. Then in junior college, I wasn't mentored, but I was supported by an attentive teacher. I was very much on my own, too much, and she gave me the support that ultimately made the life I lead possible. She was the first yes I had.
I was the only woman video editor in the world when I started at NBC in LA (1977). There still are few women in video. The old guys did not want me there, and the young guys (Under 40 I assume) only wanted to have sex with me. At least the union supported me and I made as much money as all of them. My 'mentors' were all men. (mostly writers like Ray Bradbury). My biggest mentors included a teacher at UCSC - Gordon Mumma and my ex boyfriend's dad, Paul Schafer (Founder of Radio automation). I still have my husband answer the phone when we get in new business.