Personal reflections from GENDER’s leadership and mentoring program
Photo: Freepik.
The power of women in senior gender research positions mentoring mid-career women drives not only individual development, but contributes to systemic change. Here, a mentor–mentee pair in the CGIAR Gender Researchers’ Leadership and Mentorship Program share their experiences.
In agriculture and natural resource management sectors, among others, women are generally underrepresented in higher professional positions within research, academia and policymaking.
Not only do women face systemic barriers in the workplace, but norms and socialization processes also contribute to women’s lower confidence and often-limited aspirations – illustrated by the few women role models in their fields.
Mentoring can be a powerful driver for developing women’s careers – particularly for retaining and encouraging women to progress in STEM areas and in ‘non-traditional’ careers.
During mentoring, senior professionals share their experiences, knowledge and networks with their mentees. This can strengthen the agency of women mentees, raise their goals, and increase their knowledge and leadership potential.
Career mentoring can also give women the necessary self-confidence to enable them to pursue senior positions that fit their own terms – strengthening their self-esteem and sense of self-worth, and capacity to make meaningful contributions.
Structured program supports mentees’ career progression and influence
In 2021, the CGIAR Gender Researchers’ Leadership and Mentorship Program began, led by the CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform and African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD). Participating researchers were selected from CGIAR centers and national agricultural research and extension systems worldwide.
Targeted at mid-career gender researchers, the program aimed to give mentees learning opportunities through nurturing and guiding support from more experienced professionals. This new scientific knowledge, and networking and leadership skills would support the career progression and influence of mentees.
The program’s complementary parts comprised a virtual leadership course and coaching sessions (September 2021 – August 2022), followed by a mentoring phase (late 2022).
The experiences shared here are from the mentoring phase, which began with a workshop (October 2022) in Naivasha, Kenya, with 17 pairs of mentees–mentors taking part.
Mentee and Mentor
Reflections from a mentee
Dr. Sanju Koirala
I was very excited when I came to know that I was selected for the program. It was challenging to select the right mentor: one who was not just academically sound but with whom I could also comfortably have open conversations.
My senior colleague referred me to Dr. Meeta Sainju Pradhan, and I was impressed by her humbleness and friendly personality. What also worked for me was the cultural and language similarities; I could relate to her professional and personal experiences.
I met her on the first day of the mentoring orientation workshop. We knew very little about each other; however, the program was designed to give us ample time to interact, using key questions to reflect on our professional and personal life, career goals, capacities and weaknesses.
The most important part of the program was setting future career goals in a structured way. During the reflective session with my mentor on my professional purpose, I realized that I did not want to be confined to conducting research – I aspire to be an evidence-based advocate who will contribute towards building an inclusive and just society. However, I lacked the competencies to achieve this.
With my mentor, I developed an action plan to improve my presentation and communications skills, and increase my visibility to enhance this leadership and advocacy.
After the workshop, I worked on implementing my goals. I have facilitated a session in my organization on how gender and biophysical researchers can collaborate during research, which also gave me an opportunity to open a conversation about the support required to conduct inclusive research. I have also participated in several workshops and seminars to increase my visibility and network. This work has created change: I have gained confidence in public speaking.
I have professional and personal commitments, so it is challenging to spend extra time pondering career goals, and to be assertive all the time. I was in a hurry to see immediate changes in myself. However, I have realized that my goals are both short and long term, which require continuous steps to achieve.
I feel fortunate that I now have a ‘go-to advisor’ to discuss my professional goals, and tools for development that I revisit as a reminder of what I want to achieve.
Mentee and Mentor interacting with the MOW facilitator
Reflections from a mentor
Dr. Meeta Sainju Pradhan
When Dr. Koirala requested me as her mentor, I was uncertain I could provide the level of support she would want, due to my own multiple professional and personal responsibilities. But she eventually convinced me, and I began my journey to formally mentor a young, female, professional research scientist.
I thought about my past work in assessing human resources, mentoring and building the capacity of staff in different organizations – and the professionals whom I had turned to for guidance about career choices or about the demanding challenges of being a married mother with professional career ambitions.
However, I still had some doubts about the effective use of my time to fly halfway across the world and sit in a workshop being oriented on ‘mentoring’. Yet after the very first session, I was keenly anticipating the systematic mentoring approach, and very soon realized that the program would be effective for me too.
It was interesting and refreshing to work through new and old tools to assess our own competencies, craft our professional goals, better understand and practice active listening skills, become more familiar with our own tendencies to manage conflict, and learn how to make conflict management more productive.
Working on our individual ‘purpose roadmaps’ – outlining our career goals, the pathways that we needed to negotiate to get there, and the academic and research qualifications, experiences and competencies necessary – made me realize that I hadn’t concretely thought about these issues in a while.
I found myself taking a hard look at my own career goals… so many issues to muddle through and examine! Thinking critically and systematically about my career goals and new pathways created excitement and motivation for me.
The whole experience recalled professional women mentors in my life, who were cognizant of women’s multiple roles and responsibilities to juggle. The ‘Super Professional Mom’ challenge was one that I wanted to take up; and these mentors provided sound advice, laid out different pathways to achieve it and gave me a boost of self-confidence.
My male role models pushed me to make use of my capabilities and qualifications – and despite being an important part of my career progression, often missed the nuances of sociocultural challenges that women face in everyday life.
I have always enjoyed talking to and guiding young women professionals: sharing my own experiences, ambitions, challenges and fears; and learning from their perspectives too. I believe it has helped them feel that they are not alone, that there are pathways to tackle the challenges, and that they can draw on a collective network (their ‘sisterhood’).
This kind of systematic and formal mentoring process can help to ensure that the relationship between mentors and mentees becomes productive over time. As mentor–mentee pairs, we agreed on specific competency and career development goals for the mentee, and have been meeting periodically to discuss progress on the ‘plan’.
After a while, the evolution and growth of this relationship will be up to us – but the professional and personal bond is already in place, and we have already found opportunities to collaborate on new initiatives.
