How can mentoring support women in a male-dominated workplace? A case study of the UK police force

Mentoring and learning

In order to avoid a lengthy debate about mentoring definitions, but recognizing that there are variables between the United States, the United Kingdom, European and Australian commentators, for the purpose of simplicity, mentoring for this research is:

…a unique interpersonal relationship between two individuals (Janasz et al. 2013: 1437).

The key purpose of mentoring relationships are to support and challenge both parties towards their learning and development (Parsloe and Wray, 2004; Garvey, 2014). Parsloe and Wray suggest that when all the theory is taken away, mentoring is still a simple one-to-one meeting held regularly to support the mentee in their ambitions to make improvements either in their personal or working life.

The intention of the women’s only mentoring programme, investigated in this study, was to encourage the movement of women into higher levels in the organization. The Police mentors agreed definition for their formal mentoring programme was;

Mentoring is a supportive, confidential relationship, enabling one to realize and achieve their potential.

Academics still consider formal mentoring to be under-researched (Wanberg et al., 2003; Eby and Lockwood, 2005; Allen et al., 2006; Baugh and Fagenson-Eland, 2007; Parise and Forret, 2008; Baranik et al., 2010; Chun et al., 2012). The world of practice seems to recognize its benefits but the concern is that its rapid rise in the world of business has resulted in a lack of clarity about what formal mentoring actually does and what is learnt by those involved. In short, it is still not fully understood what value formal mentoring adds (Ragins and Kram, 2007; Chun et al., 2012). This article attempts to provide evidence on whether formal mentoring can make a positive difference in the workplace.

It is known that mentoring creates benefits for the mentee and the organization in relation to performance, motivation, knowledge, skills and change but less so for the mentor (Megginson et al. 2006) and that learning outcomes can be extrinsic and intrinsic (Jones, 2012; St-Jean and Audet, 2012). However, it is not sufficiently understood in the world of practice how both parties benefit. Studies tend to show the benefits to either mentees (Phinney et al., 2011) or mentors but rarely investigate the benefit for both parties together (Philip and Hendry, 2000; Laiho and Brandt, 2012; Garvey, 2014; Snoeren et al., 2016). This study will investigate the learning for both parties.

Mentoring activity has gained much momentum in private and public sector businesses, in small and large business enterprises, and within educational institutions and social contexts (Garvey, 2014). This high degree of interest is due to mentoring developing a reputation as a vehicle to develop human resources in an organization, creating learning and positive outcomes for both the individuals involved and the organization (Hansford et al., 2002; Gibson, 2004; Allen et al., 2006; Egan and Song, 2008; Garvey, 2014; Wang et al., 2014). Thurston et al. (2012) suggest this is because mentoring is an opportunity for individuals to learn, to realize their potential, to make improvements and to ultimately make changes for the better. This resonates well with the academic and agreed definitions mentioned above.

Women in the workplace

Workplaces are becoming more diverse for a number of reasons; women’s participation rates have increased over the last 40 years as they no longer leave the workplace once they get married, they are much more likely to return to work and continue to work after having children and there is a growth of ethnic minority populations joining the working population too (Konrad, 2006). This is because of changes in legislation, for instance the Equality Act 2010, forcing workplaces to be more reasonable about how they recruit and retain employees, that is, allowing more flexible working patterns (part-time, job share, working from home) for returning mothers, workplace positive action programmes etc. In short, changes in the demographics, greater international competition and potential skills shortages in the United Kingdom have forced businesses to recognize and support the development of the increasing number of economically active women and minority groups within the workforce (Perrons, 2003; ONS, 2015).

Even though, there are an increasing number of women in the workplace and research shows that women and men are equal in ambition, ability and commitment in the workplace (Hyde, 2014), there is still horizontal and vertical segregation of the labour market (Gianettoni and Guilley, 2016). Horizontally in respect of gendered occupations occupied by mainly men (for instance, the UK Police force) and vertically where often men are in more senior positions (for instance, the UK Police force.) This leads to women being within jobs that are more stereotypically female (Derks and Ellemers, 2016) being paid less and having lower status than men. Now, in the United Kingdom, 8% of women are Managers/Directors and Senior Officials (ONS, 2015), but this rises to 30% if Professional occupations are added. This shows that, although rising, there is still sexual division of professional orientation (Vouillot, 2007) whereby men are over-represented in the higher levels and women tend to be over-represented in highly feminized occupations lower paid jobs:

The general pattern is that women have increased their share of professional and managerial occupations, albeit at lower levels, at the same time as increasing their share of low-paid, low skill jobs. The consequence is that women as a group have become polarized, as small numbers have gained access to higher echelons of occupational hierarchies, the vast majority remains concentrated at the lower end (Kirton and Greene, 2010: 15).

Diversity and mentoring have been the focus of considerable research attention (Wanberg et al., 2003; Devos, 2007; Chandler and Ellis, 2011) and an often-touted outcome is the assistance that mentoring might provide in helping women and minority groups to gain access to personal networks needed to navigate often complex social and organizational environments (Wanberg et al., 2003; Gibson, 2004). Therefore, empirical evidence suggests mentoring is becoming especially relevant to issues of diversity, revealing the importance of mentoring support whilst women still contend with the “glass labyrinth” (Eagly and Carli, 2007; Hoyt, 2010), which involves finding ways through the “concrete wall” (Eagly and Carli, 2007), the “glass ceiling” (Richards, 2001; Gibson, 2004; Kirton and Greene, 2010), and the “glass cliff” linked to organizational prejudice towards women typically created by and within the organizations, and the “sticky floor” (Shambaugh, 2007) typically created by women themselves.

The UK police

The new Police in the United Kingdom was established by the State in 1829 to ensure social control and public order on the streets. A “cult of masculinity” (Waddington, 2006) was established by the strong men who were sent out to deal with difficulties on the street. Policing was seen as “a man’s world” (Barrett, 2015), which ensured that men were given the more powerful positions and monitored/controlled the flow of talent through the hierarchy; even now within the Police it can still be seen that there are typically more men within the more active physical/Firearm type roles and more women within more office-based domestic/childcare type roles. In the last few decades, the purpose of the Police role has developed beyond the streets and into the private lives of citizens whereby the Police are dealing more with social, family/domestic issues. This has changed the priorities of policing towards a more socially responsible, community focused role. This in turn has created a shift in the structure of the organization in relation to the composition of the jobs available towards more supportive, victim-support type roles. In theory, this should have opened up more opportunities for women, and as a result created a more gender reflective, more equal workforce. Statistics show that an equal workforce in the Police has not been established yet; there are still only 23% of women in senior positions (Allen and Dempsey, 2016), but attempts have been made through certain targeted learning and development activities to work towards this through mentoring programmes, high potential leadership development programmes and Springboard courses aimed at minority groups.

Despite this, women are still considered to be marginalized in the Police.

Westmarland (2001) questions whether the issue is with the organizational “cop culture” (Reiner, 2012) and more specifically the management prejudices within it;

as a traditional, patriarchal, quasi-military group of men, hostile to women, which strives to perpetuate clearly drawn lines dividing masculine and feminine (p. 23).

This suggests that those part of the majority group (men) have better opportunities to network and build supporting relationships in the workplace than those that don’t. The assumption made is that women have access to less senior workplace networks than men. This in turn suggests that women would have less access to informal mentoring opportunities, as they have less colleagues/networks to request this from.

Various writers have also argued women in the police may mask their femininity or behave in masculine ways to deflect unwelcome attention, blend into the system and to achieve success (Martin, 1996; Maddock, 1999; Westmarland, 2001; Silvestri, 2003). In other words, police women wanted to become one of the boys (Heidensohn, 1995). But more recently, there has become a new type of police woman who is more independent, more confident, openly feminine, more challenging, unwilling to blend in, unwilling to hold themselves back and who may be more capable than their male colleagues. Diversity policies help to support this movement in the workplace as do Home Office/Home Affairs reports and reports from national women’s associations (for instance, the British Association for Women in Policing), which suggest the implementation of new initiatives to address the inequality in the workplace.

However, despite the obvious obstacles within the Police environment, such as stereotype threat and institution-level discrimination (Kleinlogel and Dietz, 2016), there are slowly becoming more women within leadership positions, suggesting that it is possible for women to successfully negotiate the glass labyrinth (Eagly and Carli, 2007: Hoyt, 2010). Silvestri (2003) stated that those women who have conquered the glass ceiling need to be willing to act as role models and mentors to those women who want to be in similar positions to them. Silvestri (2003) suggested that:

the fight for a place in policing must continue to come from women themselves (p.183).

Women mentoring other women could be a way to do this—hence a clear rationale for investigating these phenomena further.

In short, mentoring has been increasingly used as a development tool by many public sector organizations in the United Kingdom (Snell, 2009; CIPD Factsheet, 2016) and this sector has been subject to huge economic, political and social pressures in relation to changes in political leadership, recessions and changes in public expectations which have led to the need for institutional change (Chynoweth, 2015). New policies and priorities have needed to be adopted within the public sector to cope with this change, which has resulted in the need for different management approaches, and different organizational structures and ways of leading and managing the increasingly diverse workforce. The UK Police force is a good example of this.