Over mentored but under sponsored: A hidden barrier to women’s progression

by Robert Shore, Brightmine HR Markets Insights Editor and Vernujaa Nagandiram, Brightmine HR Data Insights Analyst

Mentorship and sponsorship are often treated as interchangeable, but they play very different roles in career progression — particularly for women.

Often framed as the lever that will close stubborn gaps in senior representation, mentoring has become the most visible proof point of organisational commitment to women’s career progression. But progression outcomes remain uneven, which points to a deeper issue: women are being helped to develop — but not consistently positioned to advance.

The issue, then, is not that sponsorship doesn’t exist, but that it is unevenly distributed. When it remains informal, who benefits from advocacy becomes a matter of chance, or “who you know”. High-performing women may miss out simply because they lack access to the same informal backing as their peers.

Human resources research increasingly highlights sponsorship — not just mentorship — as a critical factor for advancing women in the workplace. While mentors provide advice and support, sponsors go further: they actively use their influence to create opportunities, advocate for talent and open doors that might otherwise remain closed.

Yet in many organisations, sponsorship remains informal and unevenly distributed. It is often concentrated among those already closest to senior leaders, rather than being deliberately extended to underrepresented groups. The result is a familiar pattern: women receive plenty of developmental support but far less consistent backing to advance — leaving them, in effect, over-mentored and under-sponsored. This imbalance matters. Without sponsorship, potential is less likely to translate into progression, and leadership pipelines remain skewed.

Below, we explore why sponsorship matters, how it differs from mentorship and what organisations can do to embed sponsorship more deliberately to support gender equity in leadership.

Policy context: Why sponsorship matters now

From April 2026, employers with 250 or more employees will be able to publish a voluntary equality action plan alongside their gender pay gap data. These plans are intended to set out the steps organisations are taking to reduce their gender pay gap and support employees experiencing menopause.

To support effective action, government guidance provides a list of 18 recommended, evidence-informed actions, from which employers must select at least two in their first plan. These include mentoring and sponsorship programmes, reflecting growing recognition of their role in addressing barriers to progression.

While action plans are voluntary and not limited to progression alone, the guidance encourages employers to look beyond capability-building in isolation and consider how opportunity is created and accessed — reinforcing the case for more deliberate and structured approaches to sponsorship.

Mentorship vs sponsorship

Mentors focus on development. They provide advice, feedback and support, helping individuals build capability and insight into how the organisation works. Sponsors, by contrast, focus on advancement. They actively advocate for their protégés, using their influence to recommend them for promotions and stretch roles, introduce them to senior networks and speak up for them in talent and succession discussions. In doing so, sponsors put their own reputation on the line.

Both relationships matter, but they are not substitutes. Mentorship helps people grow; sponsorship helps them move forward.

The table below summarises the distinct roles mentoring and sponsorship play at key moments in the progression process:

Organisational moment	Mentorship	Sponsorship
Performance review	Supports reflection, capability development and career planning	Influences how performance and potential are interpreted in evaluative discussions
Stretch roles	Helps individuals build confidence and readiness for future opportunities	Actively positions individuals for high-visibility, career-defining work
Promotion decisions	Provides encouragement and guidance on readiness	Advocates in decision conversations, framing the case for advancement
Succession planning	Develops long-term pipeline readiness and development plans	Ensures individuals are named, discussed and actively backed for future roles
Networking	Advises on building relationships and raising profile	Directly creates access to senior leaders and influential networks that shape opportunity

When sponsorship is informal, inequality follows

Informal sponsorship has long been part of organisational life. Senior leaders often “take someone under their wing”, quietly backing individuals for opportunities, stretch roles or promotion. In most organisations, this kind of sponsorship already exists — but it typically operates out of sight and without clear criteria.

When sponsorship is informal, advantage tends to flow along lines of familiarity and comfort. Senior leaders, still predominantly men in many organisations, may gravitate towards sponsoring people who resemble them in background, experience or outlook. This reflects well-documented patterns of unconscious gender bias in how potential is recognised and rewarded. This “like supports like” dynamic can exclude those who do not fit the traditional leadership mould, including many women and minority groups.

As these sponsorship decisions mirror existing power structures, they can unintentionally reinforce the status quo. Where leadership teams are male-dominated and advocacy is left to personal discretion, men are more likely to be put forward for high-profile work and advancement: as much because of proximity and visibility within informal networks as because of merit. The cumulative effect is a persistent gap in progression between women and men.

The issue, then, is not that sponsorship doesn’t exist, but that it is unevenly distributed. When it remains informal, who benefits from advocacy becomes a matter of chance, or “who you know”. High-performing women may miss out simply because they lack access to the same informal backing as their peers.

A common misconception is that sponsorship amounts to “favouritism”. In reality, informal sponsorship is already shaping careers; it is just doing so invisibly and selectively. Formalising sponsorship does not create unfair advantage: it makes existing dynamics visible and creates accountability for how opportunity is allocated.

Access to sponsorship plays a significant role in shaping career outcomes. Research points to clear disparities in progression opportunities and pay between those who are sponsored and those who are not.

How to build a fair sponsorship culture 

Recognising the risks of informal sponsorship is only the first step. Building a fair sponsorship culture requires more than encouraging senior leaders to “support talent”. It involves being explicit about what sponsorship looks like in practice, and ensuring it is activated consistently rather than left to individual discretion.  

This focus on formalising sponsorship aligns with government guidance on offering mentoring and sponsorship programmes as part of a wider approach to progression and inclusion.

Harvard Business Review’s “ABCD of sponsorship” offers a useful framework for making sponsorship explicit and consistent, rather than informal and discretionary. Sponsors play an active role in:

• Amplifying achievements, by ensuring an individual’s impact and potential are recognised in senior decision-making conversations.
• Boosting progression, by actively backing individuals into visible, career-shaping assignments.
• Connecting people to influential leaders, networks and opportunities that expand their exposure.
• Defending against bias, doubt or unfair challenge when progression decisions are being made.

These actions are what convert capability into advancement. However, defining good sponsorship is not the same as delivering it consistently.

To move sponsorship from informal practice to a meaningful lever for progression, organisations should focus on these system-level actions:

1. Define sponsorship clearly: Set out the specific behaviours expected of sponsors (advocacy, visibility, backing into stretch roles) and how these differ from mentoring.
2. Make sponsorship a leadership expectation: Treat it as a core part of senior roles, not a voluntary or informal activity.
3. Embed sponsorship into talent processes: Link it to succession planning, high-potential identification and allocation of career-shaping stretch roles.
4. Track access and outcomes: Monitor who is sponsored, who gets career-shaping opportunities and how this translates into progression.
5. Introduce structured sponsorship programmes: Particularly for high-potential women at key career transition points, to reduce reliance on informal networks.

Accountability audit: Is sponsorship treated as a leadership responsibility?

Ask these questions when reviewing leadership and talent processes:

1. Are senior leaders expected to sponsor talent as part of their role?
2. Is sponsorship recognised, reviewed or evaluated in any way?
3. Are outcomes tracked, or is sponsorship assumed rather than evidenced?
4. What happens if sponsorship activity is absent or uneven?

When sponsorship is treated as a system rather than a favour, and used alongside strong mentoring, organisations are better placed to ensure that women’s progression is driven by potential and performance.