E-Mentoring Women: Lessons Learned From A Pilot Program

Mentoring has been identified as a key strategy for career development and organizational advancement and has been argued to be indispensable for women to succeed. E-mentoring has increased in popularity as a means of increasing access to mentors, especially female, and reducing some of the challenges associated with being mentored by men. Although access to mentors and mentoring is considerably improved in an e-mentoring environment, it is unclear if the quality and effectiveness of e-mentoring matches traditional mentoring. This qualitative study examines the overall effectiveness of an e-mentoring program focusing on providing psycho-social and career-development support to female mentees, developing trust in a virtual environment, and the mentee/mentor matching process

An Exploration Of Gender And Trust In Mentoring Relationships

To explore the role of gender and trust in mentoring, fifteen interviews with mentors were conducted. Eight mentors were male and seven were female; eight were involved in cross-gender mentoring. Subjects were asked to discuss the levels of trust they had developed in their relationships, and what had influenced its development. Interviews were conducted by telephone, transcribed, and analyzed independently by the two authors. This paper will present these findings and discuss future avenues of research. Practical implications to mentoring program designers are also discussed

Hiring Women: The Effects of Canada's Employment Equity Act

Organizations in Canada's federal jurisdiction are required to adopt Employment Equity Programs (EEPs) designed to increase the presence of four traditionally underrepresented groups: women, aboriginal peoples, disabled persons, and visible minorities. This article reports the results of a study that examines the effect of EEPs on the hiring of women. Results suggest that organizations that adopt EEPs that are more formalized, more comprehensive, and better supported are more likely to hire a more representative number of women. The effects of EEPs, however, differ across occupational groups and among women with and without dual status (visible minorities, aboriginals, disabled).

Sexual Versus Non-Sexual Workplace Aggression and Victims’ Overall Job Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analytic approach was used to examine whether sexual and nonsexual forms of nonviolent workplace aggression (both verbal and nonverbal) share equivalent or differential relationships with victims\u27 overall job satisfaction. When the meta-analytic comparison was restricted to all-female samples to hold victims\u27 gender constant, nonsexual aggression was found to share a significantly stronger negative relationship with victims\u27 overall job satisfaction than was sexual aggression. In addition, nonsexual aggression was found to share a stronger negative link with women\u27s level of job satisfaction than with men\u27s

Can e-mentoring take the "gender" out of mentoring?

Mentoring has been identified as a key strategy for career development and organizational advancement, and has been argued to be indispensable for women to succeed. E-mentoring has increased in popularity as a means of reducing some of the challenges associated with being mentored by men. Numerous studies conducted on formal mentoring programs have concluded that there are serious implications to consider in traditional cross-gendered mentoring schemes. A sample of six mentees and seven mentors (three female and four male) were interviewed after a year-long e-mentoring program was created to promote women to leadership roles within the Information Technology (IT) sector. The paper explores whether gender-biases encountered in traditional mentoring schemes are transcended when using an e-mentoring platform. Results from this qualitative study suggest that mentor gender still impacts the mentoring relationship even in a virtual environment. The study’s findings indicated male mentors tended to be more methodological in solving problems with their mentees, unlike female mentors who took a more indirect approach. Further, female mentors improved their mentee’s confidence through encouragement and relating to their mentee on a more personal level, a practice often avoided by their male counterparts. A summary of these findings is provided below, followed by a detailed discussion of the results and a section offering possible future research avenues to explore

Wage Gap Changes among Organizations Subject to the Employment Equity Act

Canada's "Employment Equity Act" is designed to promote the presence of designated group members (women, visible minorities, aboriginal peoples and disabled persons) in the workplace. By increasing access to better paying jobs, the wage gap between designated group members and white men should be closing. This study examines wage gap reductions among organizations subject to the Act as well as the role Employment Equity Programs (EEPs) play in closing the wage gap. Using five years of data, we find that: (1) organizations subject to the Act are slowly closing the wage gap; and, (2) organizations with more formalized, comprehensive and supported EEPs are closing the wage gap more rapidly. Implications to policy-makers, practitioners and researchers are discussed.