Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A department chair who systematically nominates junior women for keynote slots at major conferences
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A mentor who writes recommendation letters when asked but never volunteers advocacy is mentoring, not sponsoring
Editorial commentary
Recognised as a distinct construct from mentoring because it predicts career advancement more strongly and is often inequitably distributed. Funders’ narrative-CV templates now invite description of sponsorship work in ‘contributions to individuals’ sections.
References
- Ibarra et al. 2010 ‘Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women’ HBR
- National Academies ‘The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM’ (2019)
Also known as
Career sponsorship · Active advocacy relationship
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
xml
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Sponsorship relationship"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/sponsorship-relationship" />json
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"name": "Sponsorship relationship",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/sponsorship-relationship",
"description": "A career-development relationship in which a senior researcher (sponsor) uses their social and political capital actively on behalf of a more junior researcher's career advancement — through nomination, recommendation, public advocacy, or introductions — going beyond the advisory dyad of mentorship.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/mentorship-training-and-career-stages/",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/sponsorship-relationship",
"sameAs": [
"Career sponsorship",
"Active advocacy relationship"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
