Mentoring, Women and Career Progression

For organisations seeking to retain women and support their career progression, external mentoring offers targeted support through key career transitions, including returning after maternity leave, stepping into leadership and building the professional relationships that help careers progress.

It gives employees access to informed, independent guidance while signalling that their development remains an organisational priority.

The 2025 Women in the Workplace study by McKinsey and LeanIn.Org found that entry-level women were less likely than men to receive career-boosting support from managers and more senior colleagues, including advocacy, work aligned with their career goals and clear information about what advancement requires.

This disadvantage was also evident at the first step into management: the study found that 93 women were promoted to manager for every 100 men. Furthermore, fewer women than men wanted promotion when they received less support, but when women and men received similar levels of support, they were equally enthusiastic about progressing.

These findings suggest that the support women receive can affect not only their immediate opportunities, but also whether advancement appears achievable and worthwhile.

External mentoring can help address this gap by giving women dedicated access to the guidance that progression often requires. A mentor can help their mentee identify suitable opportunities, assess what a prospective role demands, recognise the evidence of their mentee’s readiness and prepare for discussions about promotion, pay or greater responsibility.

Returning after maternity leave

External mentoring can provide continuity before, during and after a return from maternity leave, particularly when the employee’s role, working pattern or career priorities have changed.

UK government research found that mothers who remained with the same employer were less likely to move into a lower occupational category, but were also less likely to progress into more highly paid occupations.

An external mentor can help the returning employee look beyond the immediate practicalities and assess what is happening to her career. Together, they can examine whether the scope of the mentee’s role has changed, whether important projects or responsibilities have been reassigned and whether new working arrangements are affecting her visibility or access to developmental opportunities.

This gives women a clearer basis for deciding what requires action. The mentee may need to rebuild particular relationships, clarify whether changes to her responsibilities are temporary or prepare for conversations about workload, flexibility and progression.

Continued mentoring beyond the first weeks of the return can also help the mentee review whether agreed arrangements are working and whether she remains on a path towards future opportunities.

Stepping into leadership

Women entering leadership may encounter what Catalyst, a global workplace inclusion organisation, calls the ‘double-bind dilemma’: women leaders may be judged as either too assertive or not authoritative enough.

An experienced external mentor can help a new leader examine these expectations without accepting every response as an accurate measure of her performance. They can help her distinguish between useful feedback, individual reactions and judgements shaped by narrow assumptions about how authority should be expressed.

Mentoring also provides a confidential place to prepare for the practical demands of leadership. After a difficult meeting or decision, a mentor can help analyse what happened, what the mentee might approach differently and which criticism should not be accepted uncritically.

Building influence and professional relationships

Women can be excluded from informal relationships through which information, advocacy and opportunities often travel.

The UK government-commissioned review Women’s Progression in the Workplace identified informal networks, unclear promotion processes and the tendency of senior people to support those similar to themselves as barriers to advancement.

External mentoring can help women navigate these dynamics more deliberately by identifying where decisions are made, which relationships matter and how the mentee can make her expertise better understood beyond her immediate team.

Making mentoring count

For organisations, external mentoring offers more than an individual development benefit. It can strengthen retention, support the leadership pipeline and help ensure that maternity leave or a move to flexible working does not weaken access to progression.

Its value lies in independence and sustained attention: the mentee can discuss ambition, workplace relationships and difficult decisions outside the organisation’s reporting lines.

Through 10Eighty, organisations can give women access to experienced mentors selected around their role, objectives and circumstances, while involving them in the final choice.

Employing external mentors in this way turns a general commitment to women’s progression into practical support and sends a clear message that the organisation is serious about developing a more inclusive leadership pipeline.