Is it time to step things up? Support is not the same as allyship
This month I had the privilege to be part of the International Women’s Day IC Global Cafe, alongside Christina Hughes to talk about something I’m passionate about – what it means to be a good ally for women at work. Having had a bit of a ‘crazy paving’ career in higher education for the last 25 years, I wanted to share my research on what it takes to elevate women on their path to leadership. And we can’t do this without involving the people that are often not part of the conversation!
In higher education, leadership remains overwhelmingly male-dominated (nearly 70% of professorships were held by men in the latest Advance HE staff statistical report), and despite progress, many women still face significant barriers to leadership roles. The picture gets even worse when looking at intersectional data. The reasons behind this are well known and include structural biases and cultural norms. One of the most powerful, yet often overlooked, solutions is male allyship – not just supporting women individually but actively working to dismantle the systems that hold them back. So, what does real allyship look like?
Understanding Allyship: More Than Just Support
Allyship is more than being a supportive colleague or believing in gender equality. It’s about proactiveness. It begins with recognising one’s own privilege and then using that privilege to advocate for change for underrepresented groups. In professional settings, men are often seen as the default leaders and are granted authority more readily, their voices are heard more frequently, and they are often forgiven for behaviour that, in women, might be deemed too aggressive or unlikable. Women are significantly more likely to be spoken over, dismissed, or have their ideas co-opted by male colleagues. True allyship means recognising these biases and actively challenging them. It means calling out discrimination, advocating for equal pay, ensuring promotion criteria do not disproportionately benefit men, and addressing gender disparities at every level of leadership. Globally, there are initiatives promoting male allyship, such as the UNs HeForShe campaign, which encourages men to take responsibility for gender equality. While such movements are important, the real impact comes from how it is practiced within institutions in everyday interactions and behaviours.
How Allyship is Perceived
My research acknowledged the importance of allyship, though examples of where this came from was imbalanced. Only 9% of female respondents reported experiencing allyship from a male colleague, despite men making up the majority of leadership positions. This suggests a critical gap: the people who hold the most power to create change are often the least engaged in allyship. If allyship is to be meaningful, we need more men actively working to challenge biases, disrupt systems, and ensure that leadership pathways are truly accessible to women. Additionally, most senior leaders believed they had been an ally, but when asked for concrete examples, this was often in being a mentor or coaching someone into a leadership position, often without evidencing this was someone from an underrepresented group. This highlights a broader issue: allyship is often passive, rather than active.
Moving Beyond Mentorship
One of the biggest misconceptions about allyship is that mentorship and coaching are enough. While these forms of support are valuable, they often focus on helping individuals succeed within an unfair system, rather than changing the system itself. Many institutions equate allyship with mentorship, but there is a crucial difference: Mentorship is about guiding someone through challenges. Sponsorship is about using your influence to help others advance. Allyship is about challenging why those barriers exist in the first place and working to remove them.
Allyship takes courage
If allyship has potential for change, why do we not see more of it? My research highlights several key barriers:
1.Misconceptions of allyship. Many research participants spoke about allyship in the context of mentoring or coaching. This shows a gap in understanding what true allyship means, and how advocacy can be enacted to benefit all women, not just the few who are lucky enough to be allocated a mentor or coach.
2. Workplace Culture: Higher education is often bound in competitive structures and metric-based reward, where success is tied to self-promotion rather than collective progress. As one leader put it:
“We need to get better at looking out for each other and championing each other. Otherwise, only the most ruthless will ever succeed because they care less about disadvantaging others in the process.”
3. Accountability: Everyone is aware of the issues, but there is a sense that shared responsibility ultimately means no-one is accountable. How can we work towards responsibility for gender equity collectively to achieve this? If we are not accountable, change stagnates.
4. Fear. The biggest barrier, in my opinion lies in … fear of speaking up. Fear of making mistakes or saying the wrong thing. Fear of challenging systems that have traditionally benefited the patriarchy. But change demands courage. True allyship isn’t about supporting women behind closed doors, it’s about actively advocating for them in every space where power is held.
Practical Steps for Senior Leaders
So how can senior leaders take meaningful action to foster inclusive leadership?
1. Lead by example: Allyship should go beyond words and senior leadership teams should be reviewing pay disparities, applying equality impact assessments to policies, and implementing tangible solutions to address the problems. Easier said than done in the current climate – I know! But just because things are tough doesn’t mean we should shy away from the problem.
2. Use data to drive change: Institutions must track gender representation in leadership and hold themselves accountable for disparities.
3. Leverage existing platforms: Initiatives like Athena SWAN and university women’s networks should include male allyship efforts.
4. Make allyship visible: Leaders should publicly advocate for women’s leadership opportunities, not just in private mentorship settings, but in committees and policy discussions.
5. Being both reactive and proactive: Leaders should reactively challenge bias, favouritism, and exclusionary behaviours, but also in proactively increasing capacity for inclusion and respect. Some good work here from De Souza and Schmader (2024).
To close, I’m not suggesting that good allies don’t exist, of course they do – but where this happens, we need further understanding of how we can role model these behaviours. At its core, allyship is not just about helping women succeed, but about creating a world where leadership is not defined by gender at all. The question is no longer whether men should be allies, but are they willing to do the real work it takes to be one?
Head of the National Centre for Research Culture
March 2025