Intersectional Mentorship: A Model for Empowerment and Transformation

Mentoring is a vital means of helping members of marginalized groups navigate and survive a system in which they are significantly underrepresented. Mentoring, however, does not shield these groups from inherent biases in these structures and can itself perpetuate oppression. This can happen when mentors fail to consider the complexities of multiple and interacting forms of oppression. Mentors might help mentees navigate one form of oppression while ignoring (or even enacting) others. This often has been the situation for women of color and other groups at the intersection of multiple marginalities. Mentorship also might perpetuate oppression when it focuses exclusively on changing the behavior of marginalized groups to survive an unjust system while leaving the oppressive system in place and unchallenged. This article advocates for a more intersectional and action-oriented model of mentorship that moves beyond an emphasis on survival and toward empowerment and transformation. Whereas mentoring helps people address a multitude of challenges in the discipline, we focus on sexual harassment as a timely example to raise critical points about the need for and practice of intersectional and action-oriented mentorship. First, we explain how the issue of sexual harassment—like other forms of discrimination that marginalize and exclude particular groups of scholars within the academy—is rooted in structural inequalities that are multifaceted. Discrimination can be simultaneously about more than one form of oppression, and a failure to consider the social location of the person experiencing it can impede the support or mentorship provided. Discrimination can be simultaneously about more than one form of oppression, and a failure to consider the social location of the person experiencing it can impede the support or mentorship provided. Second, we propose a model of intersectional mentorship that moves beyond traditional approaches in which mentors provide advice based on their own experiences. This approach asks mentors to be more self-aware of their own structural positions and to do the work necessary to understand their mentees and their experiences. We argue that an intersectional approach to mentorship provides opportunities to better support those at the intersection of multiple marginalities; it also holds accountable individuals whose structural positions provide greater protection or advantage. Although a mentor’s identity may be important, we argue that i