For many women, career progress depends on who speaks for them in the right room

It’s a closed-door meeting. Pretty hush-hush, only the bosses are in attendance. We’ve all seen such meetings happen at our workplaces. Pretty sure, there is one happening right now someplace. Be it for calibration, succession, or budgets – someone who should be in that meeting, isn’t. Someone whose name must come up as a key contributor, doesn’t. Indian organizations have become sophisticated over the last decade. Enough to build mentorship programs, women’s networks or clinically administer unconscious bias trainings. What we have not built is the habit of that moment where a senior leader says, unprompted, “She must be considered for this.

That is sponsorship. And it is not the same as mentorship. A distinction that is often overlooked and even less understood by most leaders.

What’s the difference?

A mentor advises a woman on how to navigate a room or a situation. A sponsor uses their credibility to get her a seat at the table.

Mentorship asks for your time. Sponsorship demands your reputation.

Whether it’s a stretch assignment, a high-visibility project or an opportunity to present one’s ideas to the board of directors; you are lending them your reputation. That is the give. It is a real weight, which is why rarely a leader carry it, even less carry it consistently. And that is why, women in many organizations remain the least visible.

Let’s be real – in many workplaces, culture still runs on significant relationship capital. Who knows you, who can vouch for you or who opened that door that you walked through?

Women, particularly those returning from career breaks without a formal network are unfortunately at a structural disadvantage in the economy of trust. No training program can fix that but a leader who decided to spend their capital on someone does.

The gain is not abstract.

Teams where senior leadership actively sponsor high-performers and high-potential women see measurably higher retention, capable succession pipeline, and better business outcomes.

Sponsorship is not an act of goodwill. It is a leadership decision with a measurable return — on retention, on pipeline quality, on the kind of organisation you are building for what comes next.

The ask is specific: think of one woman in your organisation whose potential you believe in. Now ask yourself whether you have said that out loud, in a room she wasn't in. If the answer is no - that is where this starts. Not with a program. With one name, one conversation, one deliberate act of lending your credibility to someone who has earned it but doesn't yet have the network to claim it.

Give that. The gain compounds.