Women without sponsorship face larger barriers to career advancement in tech, new report finds

For those looking to climb the corporate ladder, professional sponsorship plays a big role in when and how people get promoted. But a new gender equity report from the Toast Institute says access to that sponsorship is far from even. 

The non-profit arm of the Calgary-based, women-focused tech talent and recruitment platform Toast released the report on Sept. 22, commissioning research from fellow Calgary startup Cashew Research.

“We’ve spent a decade telling women to be more confident. This data says confidence tracks almost perfectly with whether someone senior has your back.”

April Hicke, Toast

Toast’s report dives into the disparities that exist between men and women in the Canadian tech industry when it comes to advancing up the career ladder, and outlines the important role advocacy plays in obtaining promotions. 

“We’ve spent a decade telling women to be more confident. This data says confidence tracks almost perfectly with whether someone senior has your back,” said Toast Institute founder April Hicke in an emailed statement to BetaKit. 

During the study, Cashew surveyed 934 tech workers across Canada and found gaps in access to professional sponsorship opportunities, particularly at the mid-market level. Sponsorship differs from mentorship. Where mentorship might include informal advice and guidance, sponsorship is when a senior employee uses their professional capital or influence to advocate for a person’s promotion within an organization.

Results from the survey were stark. According to Toast’s report, 35 percent of women surveyed said they had senior sponsorship, compared to 51 percent of men. Those numbers actually flip at both ends of the seniority pipeline, with women reporting higher rates of sponsorship at both the junior and executive level than their male counterparts. 

“The gap isn’t at the bottom, and it isn’t at the top,” Hicke said. “It’s at the manager and senior level.” 

That level, according to Hicke, is typically where professional programming around sponsorship falls short. 

“That’s exactly where companies stop programming and start assuming the pipeline will take care of itself,” she added. 

At that mid-to-upper-management tier, Toast’s report found that 32 to 37 percent of women receive active sponsorship, compared to 51 to 59 percent of men. Those disparities have real impacts on how employees perceive their trajectory within an organization. Toast claims that without sponsorship, more employees believe leaving a position within an organization is necessary to advance in a career broadly. But the rates at which they experience those feelings vary. For men without sponsorship, approximately 10 percent felt leaving a role would be necessary to achieve advancement, while among women, the number was between 25 and 34 percent. When sponsorship is actively provided, retention spikes, with 41 percent of women saying active sponsorship made them feel more confident they could advance within their current organization. 

Formalizing sponsorship

To close those gaps, Toast’s report recommends companies adopt a model that formally prioritizes sponsorship.

“Mentorship and sponsorship are not the same thing, and companies have been buying the cheaper one,” Hicke said.

Buying the more expensive one, as Hicke puts it, means developing training programs specifically around sponsorship within broader leadership training, as well as creating formal sponsorship opportunities between levels of management.

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“Assign sponsors at senior and manager level, train leaders on sponsorship specifically, rather than leadership generally, and make the job concrete: put her on stretch work with real accountability and visibility, then advocate for it in the room,” the report’s recommendations read.

Toast’s report was released just a week prior to the organization’s annual Toast Summit. Held in Calgary on Oct. 1, this year’s summit includes panels on the ways women in tech are navigating AI, a fireside chat with journalist and author Liz Plank, and a session on the Toast Talent Marketplace, an AI-recruitment platform the company began rolling out earlier this year.

BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.

Feature image courtesy Toast Institute.