The programming committee for the 77th Annual SAM International Business Conference is pleased to announce the acceptance of the panel presentation Mentoring Success And Specific Gender Combinations: What Works Best For The Career Development Of Men And Women?, authored by Rachel Gaines and Margaret Thompson of Clayton State University.
Presentation Abstract: Mentoring is the process of providing guidance and pragmatic advice that will support individuals in their career development process. One of the first known “mentors” was a woman, and part of a centuries-old tale, The Odyssey by Homer. A woman, Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and War, was in disguise as a male character named “Mentor” when she provided guidance to the leaders, all men (Hinton et al., 2020). Ironically, she would not have been accepted by these men as a woman mentor, so she had to pretend to be a man.
Mentoring has not changed much over the years, and many women have not benefitted from this powerful process as mentors or mentees. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of mentoring outcomes when you have specific gender combinations of mentors and mentees. Although males have benefitted from mentorship, some women continue to be disadvantaged due to a deficiency of female mentors (Dashper, 2019).
Female mentoring has emerged as a popular topic in several fields within the last few years. Although cross-gender mentoring relationships may be more popular than same-gender mentoring relationships, women may benefit more from participating in a same-gender mentoring relationship. Mentoring relationships in which other women mentor women provide the mentees with both psychosocial and career development benefits (Dashper, 2018). Conversely, mentoring relationships in which women are mentored by men are often based on career development, lack the relational component that many women value, and fail to present role models with which women can identify (Dashper, 2019).
For many years, men have experienced the value of mentoring and continue to utilize it to assist other men in developing as professionals in many industries. Conversely, it has only been recently that women have realized the importance of mentorship, particularly same-gender mentoring. As women grow in their careers, the need to develop more female role models and mentors becomes more vital (Turner-Moffatt, 2019). It is essential that women realize the power of being role models, mentors, and mentees, and actively seek out mentoring relationships with others. This paper will provide some guidance on how and with whom to seek out successful mentor-mentee relationships.
Join us online to see this great paper and many more March 31 – April 2, 2022. For registration information visit www.samnational.org/conference.