You have to have established professional credibility before you start. If you try it without building a professional track record, the risks to you are great. Besides being a risk to your professional credentials, the shadow job is also a major time commitment, she said. Unwillingness to take on the shadow job may be one reason women don't mentor other women more often. It's incumbent on women to change.
Men enjoy mentoring men, and they're good at it.
Elaine Harris, pictured on the front cover of this magazine, is another who accepted the shadow job, not only as a marketing professional, but also as a woman and a minority. In the white male power structure, we share neither the maleness that black men have nor the whiteness that white women have. Overall, she said, black women earn 85 percent of what black men and white women earn and only 60 percent of what white men earn. Networking with other black women is important, not just for career advancement but for survival, said Harris, who helped create the Black Women's Network at DuPont. At the core of the group are 15 women who meet monthly.