Informal Mentoring Among Women in Higher Education to Subvert Gender Bias

Abstract

This chapter includes a summary of the current environment of higher education for women, an analysis of formal and informal mentoring opportunities and efficacy for women, and recommendations. Women in higher education continue to contend with significant disparities in representation in leadership, biased social norm expectations related to gender, and burdensome professional and personal invisible labor related to service and caretaking. As women face these ongoing and persistent impediments to career progress and ascension, they have created networks of informal mentoring relationships that provide them with support, resources, and resilience as they contend with the male-normed environment of higher education. Informal mentoring relationships are distinct from formal mentoring relationships, as the focus is on providing support for the whole person and not just professional strategy. Informal mentoring is also more accessible to women as the dearth of women in higher education leadership can create a lack of available same-gender formal mentors who have a lens of shared experience.