Title: Mentoring women in the public sector: expectations and realities

Authors: Mary Kathleen Feeney

Addresses: Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Georgia, 204 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA

Abstract: Though many government agencies use mentoring programmes to advance women, there is a little research investigating whether mentoring produces significantly different results for women than men in the public sector. This paper investigates the role of mentoring in advancing the careers of women in the public sector by testing a series of hypotheses about the relationships between gender, mentor type (formal/informal and internal/external), and the outcomes of mentoring. The findings indicate that participating in mentorships increases public managers| career outcomes, measured as protege promotion and the number of employees supervised by the protege. Furthermore, though women are more likely to have female mentors, mentoring outcomes do not significantly vary by mentor gender. These findings point to the importance of mentoring in the public sector and call into question the focus on mentoring as a tool for advancing women in particular.

Keywords: formal mentoring; mentor gender; mentoring women; mentoring outcomes; organic mentoring; public management; public sector; government agencies; mentor type; career outcomes; female mentors; learning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLC.2006.013908

International Journal of Learning and Change, 2006 Vol.1 No.4, pp.381 - 406

Published online: 03 Jun 2007 *

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