Culturally Relevant Mentoring To Increase Migrant Women‘s Influence In Attaining Higher Organisational Roles In Australia.

For organisations to best harness their pool of talent requires enabling the representation and influence of their diverse workforce. Mentors and role models are important in making women influential to attain leadership roles, and especially migrant women from Culturally and Linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. The McKinsey report (2021) highlighted that diverse teams outperform on most measures including innovation, engagement, productivity, and financial performance. As part of a sustained focus on improving gender diversity, particularly within its leadership teams, AECOM has been running its Advocate Program for over three years. This mentoring Program, which matches senior female employees with leaders, sits within AECOM’s Sustainable Legacies strategy. To date it has supported the career development of high-performing senior women and has increased the gender balance. In 2020, AECOMAustralia established female participation targets to achieve 40% overall workforce, 25% senior and middle management team, and 50% graduates by 2022.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2020), CALD woman’s workforce participation was 43% (with one qualification), and 56% (with three or more qualifications) in Australia. However, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (2021) report on the participation of all women in Australia, did not include CALD or migrant figures. CALD skilled Migrant women continue to be undervalued and underemployed, with their representation and influence in Australia somewhat limited within a predominantly male and / or western context of top leadership and management. Under this model, people of certain backgrounds are often perceived as ineffective leaders, which is a challenge for most professional migrant women, who are often stereotyped to be submissive. For instance, Asian migrant women face a glass and a bamboo ceiling, together with the additional migrant disadvantages, in navigating their careers into leadership. They also do not often relate to the ‘conventional strong women’ archetype, often white women, perceived to be taking on traditional masculine and transactional leadership traits to get ahead.

This highlighted the importance of CALD migrant women being mentored in a culturally relevant context through the lived experiences of other successful and influential CALD migrant women. This gap needs to be addressed to achieve the gender and intersectionality objectives under the Victorian Equality Act 2020 and to have employees and organisations alike be successful. Learning from women of similar backgrounds could inspire and assist migrant women who are planning to create influential career pathways in Australia.

In a Deakin University research, a migrant woman of colour shared that her influence was enabled when an experienced and emphatic Indian lady manager became one of the top partners in her firm. Being mentored by a quiet-achieving, culturally similar, leader gave her the confidence that she did not have to emulate masculine energy or ‘talk herself up’ to get promoted. Observable elements such as gender culture, ethnicity, physical attributes, and similar personalities were important in the development of her career, and hence influence for herself and others. Similarly, the preliminary findings from an ongoing La Trobe University research on migrant women academic leaders in Australian Universities, indicated the importance of having mentors from migrant backgrounds, along with other local mentors to gain leadership positions. The merits of modelling from ethnically similar mentors for ethnic minority students have also been demonstrated in the United States, through the integration of women in Indian organisations.

Learning from the lived experiences of other migrant woman mentors to find employment, empowerment, and influence have been core to organisations such as the Professional Migrant women (PMW) group. Through an engaging migrant women community, and tailored culturally relevant mentoring sessions, PMW has been supporting and empowering migrant and refugee women in Australia to find professional employment and increase their influence by finding their voices as future leaders. Engaging, and partnering with such advocacy groups can help harness this pool of skilled talent, while also furthering industry and organisational diversity and inclusion initiatives in Australia.

Culturally relevant mentoring enables organisations to be more representative and relatable for other employees, the organisation’s customers, and the wider community. Therefore, more support programs and organisational policies/activities to mentor CALD women in Australian organisations will help nurture future leaders and build their influence for their own success and that of their companies.

Dr Juliana Mutum, Professional Migrant Women

Dr Frédéric Blin, AECOM

Dr Jasvir Nachatar Singh, Latrobe University