When Men Hold Top Positions, How Much Can Mentorship Help Women?

In the field of national security, there’s a clear deficit of gender diversity: Just 34 percent of senior-level career positions—which account for many of the top jobs at the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security—are held by women. The underrepresentation of women in national security isn’t just a problem in terms of optics—it’s been argued that a lack of diversity also skews policy, which matters greatly given the real human cost that can come with the decisions national-security professionals make every day.

Radha Iyengar is a national-security expert who is currently a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, a policy-analysis think tank, and is a co-host of a national-security podcast called . Previously, she held positions at the Department of Defense and