By: Alyssa Mossman

The Halo Effect  

The Discovery 

In our first installment of this series, we touched on the 10,000 women initiative by Goldman Saks. The initiative  invests in women entrepreneurs from 56 mostly non-western countries around the world, such as China, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Brazil, and the Philippines.

Besides job creation and higher profit margins, the initiative also uncovered something they call the ‘halo effect’.  Saks found that 90% of women graduating from the program are paying it forward by mentoring others in their communities, with 80% of them mentor at least 9 other women.

This Halo effect was also touched on by Leila Hoteit in her TED talk. She speaks about herself and her fellow Arab women saying, “faced with patriarchal society, [arab women] found that by helping each other, all benefit”. She finds that the “psychological trap” of putting other women down is something that plagues the western woman.

The Westen Woman 

Sheryl Sandberg would like to disagree with that. In her article for the New York Times she breaks down the catty western woman trope.  She shows how the evidence is suggesting even western women help each other more than they hurt each other (and most often help each other more than men help women).

According to statistics, when women join a board, there’s a better chance that other women will rise to top level executive positions. In a study, women in the group were mentored by 73% of available women and only 30% of available men. In general, 10% more women pay it forward with mentorship than men overall. 

The catty woman stereotype is true in certain cases,  but this is not  gendered behaviour.  It’s natural for those who feel threatened to distance themselves from those who could snatch their hard earned achievements out from under their feet; and when there is only room for one woman at the top it’s bound to spark some unhealthy competition.

What Can We Do? 

What has been shown in the research is that there is an innate desire in the majority of women to help each other. The patriarchal systems just makes it really difficult sometimes.

In order to change the status quo we need more mentorship, and more women landing leadership roles.

Employers: Be a part of the change! There are plenty of quality candidates on Leading Talent to fill your role. Post your job here.