Women Who Mentor Women

This remembrance of women's health advocate extraordinaire Barbara Seaman sparked a lot of thinking for me about women's networking and mentoring. As in, the way that women are mentors, and are mentored, and how it is so important to support other women's professional development along with our own.

Although the article doesn't use this word, it is an amazing testament to the power of mentoring among women. It's not that simple, of course. One doesn't achieve success simply by meeting the right people or being encouraged by them to do something great. But those things are a crucial help to people who do have the drive and the skills and the passion, but who might not have the confidence, or the connections, or the secret handshake needed to get a foot in the door or to work their way up whichever ladder they want to climb.

Oh wait, confidence, connections, and knowledge of the secret handshake? You mean, all the stuff that has been so hard for women to draw upon in the same way men are able to? Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Mentoring can be of immense help to anyone, but it's especially important for people who, for whatever reason--sex, race, economic background, sexual orientation--might be easier for the powers that be to dismiss or overlook. For us folks, it is particularly invaluable to have someone available to show you the ropes, to give advice and answer questions, and to encourage growth and accomplishments that no one else may be expecting from you because of who you are.

When I think about my own favorite mentor, a woman who worked for much of her life as a judge and who I knew first as a member of my parents' church, I can list with certainty the ways in which she has helped me in my schooling and my career. She helped me decide to go to law school, wrote letters of recommendation for me when I was looking for positions after school, talked with me at length about whether I might want someday to go into the judiciary or legal academia and what steps I might want to take to pursue those paths, gave me fantastically helpful comments on a legal article I published after school, and continues to send me articles or book recommendations she thinks might be helpful to my professional development. She has talked with me about her struggles as a woman in the legal profession, how she has dealt with issues ranging from work-life balance (leaving private practice to work as a judge!) to the sexist pronouns some of her colleagues prefer to use in legal opinions and texts (yup, still working on that one).

Being able to talk with someone who has been through not just the same professional training and substantive work experiences that I am going through now, but who had these experiences as a woman is invaluable. She gets it when I say how frustrated I am with marketing events for female lawyers that invariably involve spa treatments or child-centric outings with clients. She knows why I'm groaning that yet another woman has decided to leave the firm not two months after coming back from maternity leave. I have male mentors, too, whose help I am also grateful for, but these types of things don't sting them in the way they sting me. My favorite mentor knows where I'm coming from because she's been through similar things herself.

I would encourage anyone who would like to develop a mentoring relationship to think hard about what sorts of guidance you want in your career. Think big: it's a wish list. But when you're thinking about that list, don't forget about demographics. Do you want someone who can talk to you about how they have dealt with racist comments from supervisors? Or which partners haven't ever in living memory given an assignment to a woman? Or how they came out to their coworkers? As a woman in what has long been a male-dominated field, I can tell you: it helps to be able to talk to someone who is on my side and who gets it--not just academically, not just in theory, not just from a position of sympathy, but from firsthand experience. So maybe you look at your list and you can't think of a single person who fits each of these criteria. That's OK. I have multiple mentors, and they're all fabulous. Right now I'd say I've got mainly two: one male partner who has been working in my practice area for decades, and this female former judge. I wouldn't give up either of them. Together, they provide everything I could hope to put on my wish list.

I did have a strange thought when thinking about this article. I'm getting to a sandwichy part of my career--I can still benefit hugely from having mentors, but I also feel like I'm nearly at a point where I could be useful as a mentor myself. Not to young lawyers, but certainly to students interested in law or public policy. Holy crap, that's weird to realize. I find stories like this one about Barbara Seaman so inspiring, but have trouble thinking about myself serving a similar role in someone else's life. I suppose I'd better get used to it, since if I'm going to talk big about how women need female mentors, I ought to be willing to step up. Where does one even start?