Mentoring Women

Bizzari, Janice. “Women: Role Models, Mentors, and Careers.” EDUCATIONAL HORIZONS 73 (Spring 1995): 145-152. Reviews studies of the long-range effects of mentoring, role modeling, and counseling on women’s lives.

Bloom, Mayra. “Multiple Roles of the Mentor Supporting Women’s Adult Development.” In LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR WOMEN’S ADULT DEVELOPMENT: BRIDGE TOWARD CHANGE: 63-72. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1995 (NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION 65). The roles involve standing behind the student, leading/guiding, listening/questioning/connecting, and being an ally/sister learner.

Bordas, Juana. FOLLOW THE LEADER: WOMEN’S WAYS OF MENTORING. Denver, CO: National Hispana Leadership Institute, 1992. 167p. On mentoring Latinas in business and the professions.

Campbell, Lee H. “Women and Mentoring: the Tradition, the Process, the Vision.” Ph. D. diss., The Union Institute, 1992. Study of mentoring experiences of two groups: nontraditional college women and professional women found a fluidity between mentoring and friendship as well as a lingering influence on mentoring dyads from mother-daughter relationships.

Collins, Nancy W. PROFESSIONAL WOMEN AND THEIR MENTORS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO MENTORING FOR THE WOMAN WHO WANTS TO GET AHEAD. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983. 163 p. Handbook on mentoring based on responses from survey of 400 and in-depth interviews with 24 professional women. Defines and describes the mentor relationship, discusses how to select a mentor and whether to have more than one, how to deal with sex issues, contrasts male and female mentoring, and encourages mentees to become mentors themselves.

Eldridge, Natalie S. “Mentoring From a Self-In-Relation Perspective.” Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (Boston, 1990). 12 p. ED350494, available from EDRS. Work done at the Stone Center for Developmental Services, Wellesley College, on the meaning of relationships in women’s lives, has bearing on mentoring relationships. Psychosocial dimensions have more importance than career functions for many women mentees.

Emms, Judy. “Workshop: Developing Our Own Mentoring Skills.” In WOMEN, WORK AND COMPUTERIZATION, ed. by Alison Adam, et al., 325-332. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1994. Workshop developed skills in “those aspects of being a mentor at work which would enable [each participant]…to act as a mentor to junior staff” (abstract).

Faddis, Bonnie, Program Director, et al. HAND IN HAND: MENTORING YOUNG WOMEN. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory; Newton, MA: distributed by Women’s Educational Equity Act Program, 1988. Publications from a project designed to increase the motivation of minority high school women to pursue technical and non-traditional occupations. Twenty-five minority career women were trained and served as mentors. The project developed three books for use by other groups wishing to implement similar programs: Vol. 1: “Guide for Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating a Mentoring Program” is a blueprint for conducting a program. Vol. 2: “Ideabook for Mentors” contains activities and resources. Vol. 3: “Student Career Journal” is a workbook for student participants.

Kalbfleisch, Pamela J. and Joann Keyton. “Power and Equality in Mentoring Relationships.” In GENDER, POWER, AND COMMUNICATION IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS, ed. by Pamela J. Kalfleisch and Michael J. Cody, 189-212. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995. Study of 200 professional women who had been involved in mentoring relationships with a female mentor; found a “female model of mentoring” similar to friendship and more relaxed and casual than previously thought.

Karsten, Margaret Foegen. MANAGEMENT AND GENDER: ISSUES AND ATTITUDES. Westport, CT: Quorum, 1994. See section on Career Planning and Mentoring.

Keyton, Joann and Pamela J. Kalbfleisch. “Building a Normative Model of Women’s Mentoring Relationships.” Paper presented at the Joint Meeting of the Southern States Communication Association and the Central States Communication Association (Lexington, KY, 1993). 33 p. ED361796 available from EDRS. Proposes that women’s friendships may be a better model of mentoring than is a hierarchical male mentoring model.

Noe, Raymond A. “Women and Mentoring: A Review and Research Agenda.” ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW 13 (January 1988): 65-78. Discusses barriers to the development of mentorships.

Parker, Victoria A. and Kathy E. Kram. “Women Mentoring Women: Creating Conditions For Connection.” BUSINESS HORIZONS 36 (March/April 1993): 42-51. The mother/daughter dyad and different life choices of older women and their younger mentees may negatively impact on mentoring relationships. Strategies to help these relationships are discussed.

Ragins, Belle Rose and John L. Cotton. “Gender and Willingness to Mentor in Organizations.” JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT 19 (Spring 1993): 97-111. Women in this study were as willing as men to be mentors, although they foresaw more drawbacks. Individuals who had been in previous mentoring relationships were more willing to be mentors in the future. (See also other research by Ragins in the management literature).

Segerman-Peck, Lily M. NETWORKING AND MENTORING: A WOMAN’S GUIDE. London: Piatkus, 1991. 192 p. Treats networking and mentoring in business and in the professions.

Sheldon, Amy. “A Feminist Perspective On Women As Mentors.” MENTORING INTERNATIONAL 6 (1990): 16-20.

Tysl, Linda Crawley. “Cross-Gender Mentoring of Successful Women Managers in the United States Government: Toward a Female Model of Mentoring.” Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, 1993. Despite risks associated with cross-gender mentoring — from jealousy by co-workers to rumors of sexual involvements and double standards — the fourteen successful women managers studied reported positive influence from one or more mentors in their careers.

Vincent, Annette and Judy Seymour. “Mentoring Among Female Executives.” WOMEN IN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 9, no. 7 (1994): 15-20. Women who have been mentored are more likely to become mentors for others than are those who were not mentored.