Informal Mentoring Among Women in Higher Education to Subvert Gender Bias

Informal Mentoring Among Women In Higher Education To Subvert Gender Bias

Women’s participation in the workforce has been increasing steadily over the last 60 years and is expected to be nearly equal to that of men by the close of the decade (U.S. Department of Labor, 2020). Women also outpace men in educational attainment, earning 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 61% of master’s degrees, and 54% of doctoral degrees (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Despite these gains, women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions in all professional and political sectors, including higher education (American Association of University Women, 2016; Badura et al., 2018). In the academy, women make up the majority of the workforce, but they are cloistered in entry and mid-level positions facing a torrent of barriers and biases precluding them from career ascension (Cañas et al., 2019; Johnson, 2017; O’Connor, 2018).

Ongoing and persistent role congruence demands contribute significantly to the underrepresentation of women in the higher echelons of the academy (Carli & Eagly, 2016; Chrobot-Mason et al., 2019; Eagly & Karau, 2002; Goethals & Hoyt, 2017; Madsen & Longman, 2020). Role congruity is the social expectation that individuals within certain identity groups behave in prescribed manners. Social roles demand that women are communal, deferential caretakers and that leaders are independent, assertive, and agentic resulting in incongruence between the two identities (American Association of University Women, 2016; Eagly & Karau, 2002; Goethals & Hoyt, 2017). The result places women who aspire to leadership in a double bind whereby these two identities are incompatible, so they are seen as ill-suited for both roles (Bierema, 2016; Eagly & Karau, 2002). Men face no such quandary as the ideal qualities of masculinity are perfectly in sync with those ascribed to leaders.

As women contend with the myriad of unique challenges they face in the academy, they have been particularly skilled at building networks to support one another and share wisdom, guidance, and encouragement, allowing them to better navigate the labyrinth of the male-normed higher education environment (Harris & Lee, 2019; Hollander & Yoder, 1980; Madsen & Longman, 2020; Uhl-Bien, 2006; Yip et al., 2020). The networks provide natural conditions for mentoring relationships among women to develop and thrive. Mentoring relationships have been shown to have a significant impact on the success of women in the academy by providing not only support and insight but also by ameliorating the sense of isolation felt by many women in higher education (Ong et al., 2017).

Formal mentoring is a well-established construct that typically pairs an established senior leader with a novice protégé to provide career guidance and identify areas of opportunity (Harris & Lee, 2019). While these types of mentoring relationships can be useful, it is helpful for women to have same-gender mentors who understand the particular perils they face in their careers. However, the ongoing leadership gender gap and the abundance of additional personal and professional labor women contend with means there is a shortage of senior women to serve as mentors (Cross et al., 2019). In response, women have turned to informal mentoring as an alternative. Informal mentoring, which occurs organically and between women regardless of rank, can be even more impactful as it provides whole-person support and a whisper network that identifies and protects against potential harm in professional environments (Clayman Institute for Gender Research, 2019; Statti & Torres, 2019).