Best Practice or Buzzword? the Opportunities and Challenges of Mentorship for EDI in Creative Technology

Abstract

This paper explores mentorship as a much-celebrated strategy for improving equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) across a range of exclusionary working sectors. As a tactic for addressing underrepresentation and scaffolding entry, progression, and success within historically homogenous industries, mentorship is seen as a normatively beneficial practice. Yet, despite its association with greater opportunities and potential for breaking barriers, mentorship is rarely defined and how it is enacted is typically absent from discussion. Our research project tackles this ambiguity on the impact of mentorship for EDI aims and values, with a specific focus on creative and technological industries where exclusions in participation remain pernicious. Drawing on critical feminist analysis of public-facing materials about mentorship in these sectors and 40 interviews with mentorship program organizers and creative tech workers who have engaged in mentorship relationships, we outline the characteristics of mentorship activities from the perspective of three key stakeholders in EDI- corporate units such as employee resource groups, third-party companies who provide mentorship services to organizations and individuals, and community groups featuring mentorship as part of their activities. Our exploration of these three distinct models of mentorship demonstrates that the context where these activities are organized shapes their implementation, evaluation, and overall potential impacts, including for intersectional feminist aims. We conclude by arguing for the value of communal-based approaches to mentorship for more transformative outcomes related to equity, diversity, and inclusion.