Mentoring Program for Senior Women
Why mentor senior women leaders?
The continuing imperative to maximise the participation and success of women in senior university management and leadership roles is clearly articulated in the Second AVCC Action Plan For Women Employed in Australian Universities – 2006-2010:
‘…universities must draw more upon under-represented groups, particularly their women staff. They must attract, appoint and retain more women in professional and management positions. They must improve the participation, success, and leadership of women in research in order “to capitalise on the intellectual capital and potential of significant numbers of successful female undergraduates, honours students and research higher degree students”. They must develop their staff to take on leadership positions which involve management of significant financial and human resources and working in a competitive entrepreneurial and political environment.’ (AVCC, April 2006)
Recent research suggests that (generally unintentional) gender bias in universities operates below levels of consciousness generating ‘micro-inequities’ that generate significant cumulative disadvantage. These ‘micro-inequities’ in tandem with outmoded institutional structures hinder the advancement of women. It is in this context that resistance to women’s leadership also persists and presents particular challenges for women:
‘Study after study has affirmed that people associate women and men with different traits and link men with more of the traits that connote leadership… Mentoring is one of the primary means available to individual women to traverse the ‘labyrinth of leadership’ in a context where “the lessening of activism on behalf of all women puts pressure on each woman to find her own way.’ (Eagly and Carli, 2007, 67)