Happy International Women’s Day! Who Are Your Male Allies?

How exciting that International Women’s Day falls on a blog publishing day this year! So… Happy International Women’s Day! And are you getting ready to reply, “There’s a typo in the title. Don’t you mean, ‘Who are your female allies?'” While I understand the potential confusion, I did mean to ask: Who are your male allies?

But what do I even mean by that?

As career women, we’re taught to seek – and be for others – role models and mentors. As someone who always has a vision board on the go, seeing women who have paved a path and shown what is possible is tremendously valuable. When I see someone who looks like me having accomplished something big, it raises the bar and the tide. She takes me along with her. I think… “That could be me.”

And role modeling often begets mentoring. According to Oxford, the definition of mentoring is “to advise or train (someone, especially a younger colleague).” Of course, this is tremendously important too. Being a mentor and seeking mentors. I find that females are most often talking about role modeling and mentoring.

But I’ll rock the boat, per usual ; ) and offer: there’s another modality of support that I think is more important than either: sponsoring.

Sponsors are different from role models and mentors. The definition of sponsor is: “to take official responsibility for the actions of another.”

Take that in: to take official responsibility for another.

The definition is active, reaching, and perhaps even… extreme? If mentoring happens with a willing and eager participant, sponsoring happens behind someone’s back (in a good way). After all, decisions granting power must be bestowed by people with power. And typically, that means they’re happening behind closed doors, by the people who already hold the power.

These could be decisions about a promotion, financing, or granting a contract. They could also be decisions or activities on a smaller scale – a man going out of his way and setting the example of accommodating working mothers.

This is one reason why we need male allies, as our sponsors.

The reality is: men still hold much of the power and money in the world, whether explicit or implicit. They control money and often a higher hierarchy of positions. Their opinions and influence hold the weight.

As I shared on the impact of going first, my personal biggest career break came about from a man I offered a piece of gum, bonded with over running and sent an email of good luck before his upcoming race. I later discovered he was my boss’s, boss’s, boss’s boss. He became one of my biggest career sponsors and changed the trajectory of my life.

But, as with every human, men have blind spots, unrecognizable without a female perspective. We need to educate in an assume-positive-intent-way, and then ask for their advocacy in making change. After all, do we ever see change have widespread impact if only one (like-minded) group of people take a stance on something? And can we honestly say that we’ve made it to where we are now, on our own? Neither would our personal, professional, or global growth go so far if we only sought relationships with those who think exactly as we do, and hold the same power and opportunities as we do.

The African proverb rings true, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” So while the future is female, I’m not sure we can make it so alone. I’m not sure we want to make it so alone.