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Despite increasing numbers of women attaining higher levels in academic degrees, gender disparities remain in higher education and among university faculty. Authors have posited that this may stem from inadequate academic identity development of women at the doctoral level. While gender differences may be explained by multiple and variable factors, mentoring has been proposed as a viable means to promote academic identity development and address these gender gaps. A “StartingDoc program” was launched and supported by four universities in French-speaking Switzerland. The purpose of this paper is to report the experience of one of the six “many-to-one” mentoring groups involved in the StartingDoc program in 2012-2013.

This study is based on the description of a group experience within a university-based mentoring scheme offered to women entering in their PhD program in French-speaking Switzerland. It is examined using a qualitative, narrative case study design.

Themes from the narrative analysis included the four dimensions of the Clutterbuck model of mentoring (guiding, coaching, counselling, networking), as well as an additional five emerging themes: first expectations, process, sharing, building identity, and unmet expectations. The qualitative analyses suggest that mentoring can be an effective tool in supporting professional identity development among female doctoral students. However, further work is needed to elucidate the most effective strategies for developing and retaining women in academia.

While a many-to-one mentoring group has been theorized and is recognized as an effective means of supporting doctoral experience, its implementation in French-speaking Switzerland is in its infancy. This study provides insights into the value of such a mentoring scheme dedicated to women at the very beginning of their doctoral studies. Most notably it created opportunities for mentees to: discover aspects of academic life; break isolation; and develop some of the soft skills required to facilitate their doctoral journey.

As women professors of educational leadership who are involved with feminist research and the preparation of k‐12 women leaders, the authors came to the realization that while they have dedicated their professional lives to advancing women leaders in the k‐12 environment, they have neglected women like themselves, particularly young women, in the academy.

The authors utilized biographical narrative inquiry to allow readers a window into their lives as young women faculty in departments of educational leadership and extended this to advocate for changes in university climates for women.

The authors analyzed their narrative data to develop strategies for young women faculty in educational leadership that include: action‐oriented mentoring; the valuing of home and person; living within gender, age, and skin; and celebration of youth and womanhood.

This paper is an emergent approach to understanding and facilitating social justice and diversity in higher education based on four young women professors' attempt to find a creative and feminist outlet for the expression of their experiences in the academy. Little to no research exists outside of informal personal reports on young women's experiences in the academy and, thus, is the impetus for the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which an innovative higher education women’s faculty mentoring community model fosters supportive networking and career-life balance. The secondary goal is to better understand the factors that both promote and limit retention of women faculty at a large, metropolitan university.

The paper examines data from the survey component of an applied research project on understanding and supporting the complex processes of women faculty’s pathways toward self-defined success. Adopting a mixed method research approach, this manuscript focuses on the survey questions related to four key issues related to retention: mentor experiences, gender-based obstacles, a sense of support and community, and goal attainment. In addition to quantitatively examining shifts in perceptions between pre- and post-survey Likert scale questions, the authors performed a qualitative analysis of the supplemental open-ended questions, utilizing a social constructionist lens to further understand perceived influences of the mentoring community on these issues.

The findings revealed qualitatively important shifts in increased awareness surrounding mentoring, gender-based obstacles, interpersonal support, and career-life choices, offering critical insight into the intangible, and thus often difficult to capture, forms of support a mentoring community model can offer women faculty. Findings also reveal how definitions of success can be integrated into community mentoring models to support retention and empowering women faculty.

This study is limited by its exploratory nature with one mentoring community cohort. Ongoing implementations are in place to increase the participant size and further test the mentoring model, while future research is encouraged to implement and expand the research to additional higher education institutions.

This research offers a model that can be implemented across higher education institutions for all faculty, along with offering insight into particular points that can be emphasized to increase perceptions of support, offering concrete mentoring options.

This paper contributes to the advancement of mentoring models, helping to address concerns for better supporting and advancing women faculty, with implications for further supporting marginalized faculty. It offers insight into the ways in which a mentoring model can help to address key issues of retention. Additionally, analyzing quantitative and qualitative findings concurrently allowed for insight into areas that may otherwise be overlooked due to seemingly contradictory or non-significant statistical findings.

The purpose of this paper is to address the research gap on Lebanese female managers and to examine female managers' perceptions of their organizations in relation to women's career progression.

The research was quantitative in nature. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 450 female managers. Measures included personal and demographic characteristics, organizational culture, organizational practices, organizational networks, mentoring and role modeling, tokenism, and the usage of wasta.

Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance were used to explain the results. The results reveal that female managers perceive their career progression to be affected by organizational culture, practices, and networks, while mentoring and tokenism were shown to be less critical. In addition, the women in this sample perceived wasta to be a powerful determinant.

The findings contribute to a wider appreciation of the implicit barriers to women's career development and retention, will help organizations engage with the diversity agenda in this region and provide a better understanding of how these companies and their members can make progress, will help inform managerial interventions to make managers better able to make the most of the issues faced, and will help organizations make a much more concerted effort to manage junior female managers through helping them accelerate in their progression and development.

The paper contributes to the limited literature on women in management in Lebanon as well as the Middle Eastern region in general.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a discussion of some salient research relating to mentoring for women managers.

The paper draws mainly upon writing and research from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia to explore some of the issues that continue to be pertinent for the mentoring of women managers.

The paper explores some of the early arguments promoting mentoring for women in the light of more recent research. From the literature, three key issues that have important implications for women in mentoring relationships are considered. These are identifying the nature and focus of mentoring relationships; managing cross‐gender mentoring and negotiating the power dimension that underpins the mentoring relationship.

The paper provides a discussion of the practical implications of three key issues that are significant for women managers.

The paper draws together work in the field and distils a number of issues and their implications that require further attention and discussion.

What strides have been made to increase the participation of women in the work force? Should we be concerned particularly about women's place in our industries and organisations, and if so, what can be done to improve it? This article outlines the aims, approaches, achievements and future plans of a group which has been involved for the past seven years in promoting the development of women through training as a means of improving the position of women in employment.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether middle-level female administrators (particularly women of color) in the California Community College system were being mentored to higher-level positions and whether the retention of leaders in higher-level positions was influenced by mentoring. Specifically, this study examined the mobility and retention of female administrators through a web-based survey that was completed by 156 females currently working in administrative positions at the dean's level or higher in California Community Colleges. Data were also collected through face-to-face interviews with 11 female administrators, 5 of whom were women of color, in senior-level positions from vice president to chancellor. These interviews reflected a range of demographics and were located in Northern, Central, and Southern California. The focus of this chapter is on the responses of the respondents who were women of color.

The study addressed two questions: (1) What effect did mentoring, if any, have on a person's ability to achieve higher-level leadership positions? and (2) What relationship does mentorship have on the retention of women of color in leadership? Findings reported that mentoring was having a positive and often significant influence on women of color administrators and leaders in the California Community College System.

To investigate women's corporate networks, and the reported benefits for the women and their employers. To gain insight into the motivation for these voluntary activities, by drawing on organisational citizenship theory.

The paper explores the issue using in‐depth interviews with chairs and organisers of 12 women's networks, and triangulated the data with an email survey resulting in 164 responses from network members in five companies.

The paper identifies how networks were set up and managed, as well as the benefits that accrue to the organisation, the leaders and the members. Key findings were the wealth of voluntarily contributed extra‐role behaviours, and totally business‐oriented view of the activities presented by network leaders. More senior women were more likely to report prosocial behaviours such as driving change and supporting others. Organisational citizenship theory provided a lens through which to draw insight into actors' motivations for supporting corporate networking.

This is a study of only 12 corporate networks within large UK companies, but findings should be useful for any employers or senior women thinking about starting or refreshing a corporate women's network.

Women and their employers appear to benefit strongly from being involved in corporate networking. Evidence suggests that employers should support internal women's networks, given the organisational citizenship behaviours voluntarily contributed for their benefit.

This paper is the first to investigate how women's corporate networks are organised, and how their activities benefit not just the women but also the employer. Organisational citizenship theory provides insight into motivation for such initiatives. The findings should be of interest not just for those involved in women‐in‐management studies, but also to organisational citizenship and networking researchers.

Purpose – To be the first study to consider the difference between men's and women's perceptions of most important mentoring functions. Design/methodology/approach – Survey recipients identified the three most important things that mentors can do for their protégés. Two independent coders categorized the behaviors listed by the 637 respondents. Findings – There was little difference between men's and women's perceptions of important mentoring behaviors. Women more than men reported championing and acceptance and confirmation behaviors to be in what they consider the top three for importance. Additionally, the lists respondents generated under‐represented the mentoring behaviors commonly identified in the extant literature, whereas some of the behaviors most frequently identified are not well represented in the mentoring literature. Research limitations/implications – Respondents were graduates of a top‐tier MBA program, although from multiple years. Future research should examine perceptions of mentoring behaviors by employees with different educational backgrounds and across cultures, particularly to explore perceptions of mentoring behaviors where cultural and gender stereotypes are present. Practical implications – The design of mentoring programs and fostering of cross‐sex mentoring are discussed in lieu of managing protégé expectations and educating mentors about actual expectations versus the expectations they might associate with the other sex. Originality/value – The findings here extend existing research by first asking men and women to generate a list of what they perceive to be the three most important mentoring behaviors and then showing that, for MBAs at least, there is little difference across the sexes.