A new report from the Toast Institute, the non-profit arm of Calgary-based women-focused tech talent platform Toast, has found significant gaps between men and women in access to professional sponsorship within Canada’s tech industry, particularly at the middle-management level.
The report, released Sept. 22, was based on research commissioned from fellow Calgary startup Cashew Research, which surveyed 934 tech workers across the country. The study distinguishes sponsorship from mentorship, defining sponsorship as instances where a senior employee uses their professional influence to actively advocate for another person’s promotion, as opposed to the more informal advice and guidance associated with mentorship.
According to the report, 35 percent of women surveyed said they had senior sponsorship, compared to 51 percent of men. Toast Institute founder April Hicke said the gap was not evenly distributed across career stages, with women actually reporting higher sponsorship rates than men at both the junior and executive levels.
“The gap isn’t at the bottom, and it isn’t at the top,” Hicke said. “It’s at the manager and senior level.”
Sponsorship Gap Widens in Middle Management
Hicke said that mid-career tier is typically where organizations stop investing in structured sponsorship programs, leaving advancement largely to chance. “That’s exactly where companies stop programming and start assuming the pipeline will take care of itself,” she said.
At the manager and senior tiers specifically, the report found that between 32 and 37 percent of women receive active sponsorship, compared to between 51 and 59 percent of men.
The report also examined how the presence or absence of sponsorship affects employees’ views on their career prospects. Toast found that without sponsorship, more employees across genders believed they would need to leave their organization to advance. However, the rate at which that belief was held differed sharply: about 10 percent of men without sponsorship felt leaving was necessary, compared to between 25 and 34 percent of women. When sponsorship was actively provided, the report found that 41 percent of women said it made them feel more confident about advancing within their current organization.
Report Calls for Formal Sponsorship Programs
To address the disparities, Toast’s report recommends that companies adopt a model that formally prioritizes sponsorship rather than treating it as an informal or optional practice. Hicke said organizations have generally under-invested in this area. “Mentorship and sponsorship are not the same thing, and companies have been buying the cheaper one,” she said.
The report’s recommendations include assigning sponsors at the senior and manager levels, training leaders specifically on sponsorship rather than general leadership skills, and creating concrete opportunities for visibility and accountability that sponsors can then advocate for within their organizations.
Toast released the report about a week ahead of its annual Toast Summit, held in Calgary on Oct. 1. This year’s event included panels on how women in tech are engaging with artificial intelligence, a discussion with journalist and author Liz Plank, and a session on Toast’s AI-driven recruitment platform, the Toast Talent Marketplace, which the company began rolling out earlier this year.
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