What is the Feminist Mentorship Gap Project?
Like many
women, I found traditional mentorship wasn't working for me. When I began
working in PR/communications, there were no solid formal women's mentorship
programs. The few mentorship programs that existed were heavily
flawed. In one case, I landed in a mentor-mentee relationship that functioned
more like a scene out of the movie Mean
Girls.
Yet, when
I looked at how mentorship functioned among my male peers I saw a distinct
difference. Mentorship worked for them. Their mentors sponsored and championed
them. If they were caught in unproductive mentorship models, the male mentees
just left. They didn't spend time fretting over breaking off a professional
relationship that wasn't working.
Over the
years, I saw that mentorship was invaluable but women's mentorship was lacking
something. While I created my own mentorship network and personal
mentorship program, many of my female peers were having difficulties doing
this. Frankly, I thought this was an issue just in my profession. But it
wasn't.
I heard
anecdotes about female mentorship and how it failed women. I saw examples
mentorship gone wrong. In 2008, after
completing some graduate work, I determined that women required a new feminist
based mentorship model. I
In
response, I conceptualized a new type of women's mentorship and coined the
phrase "feminist mentorship gap". The question was would I have a chance to
operationalize my thought experiment? This became the Feminist Mentorship Gap Project.
While
studying law in 2010 at the University of Ottawa, the opportunity to take my
thought experiment and make it real came along. I took my feminist mentorship
gap theory and framework and founded the Women's Legal Mentorship
Program (WLMP).
Since
then the Women's Legal Mentorship Program (WLMP) has grown into a national
not-for-profit focused on working with Canadian law schools to
deliver women's legal mentorship programming and professional development.
It functions as a plug and play model but with a very specific theoretical
underpinning.
Currently,
I am completing a book: The Feminist Mentorship Gap
explaining what it is and how disrupting traditional mentorship models may help fill the gap.