Mentoring experiences of successful women across the Americas

摘要

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to compare women's mentoring experience in nine countriesrnwithin the Americas, and to explore linkages between personal characteristics, mentoring practices,rnmentoring functions, and consequences of being mentee.rnDesign/methodology/approach - A total of 1,146 successful women are questioned about theirrnmentoring experiences as a mentee: 105 from Argentina, 210 from Brazil, 199 from Canada, 84 fromrnChile, 232 from Mexico, 126 from the USA, and 190 from three countries in the West Indies (Barbados,rnJamaica, and St Vincent).rnFindings - Most of the women have more than one mentor. Across all countries mentoring practicesrnare more strongly linked to career mentoring function while the age and gender of the mentor are morernstrongly linked to psychosocial mentoring. Mentoring from the perspective of mentee has the samerndirectional relationship with situational and individual variables, but the significance ofrnthose relationships vary by country. A possible cultural difference is detected between Spanish andrnnon-Spanish speaking countries on the issue of mentoring practice.rnResearch limitations/implications - The fact that the paper focuses only on successful women inrnthis paper means the findings are not necessarily generalizable to other groups of women or men. Thernpaper is also limited because mentoring functions are constrained to two: psychosocial and career.rnThere may be more functions that mentoring could fulfill for the mentee.rnPractical implications - Companies' interest in fostering mentoring among their members,rnparticularly women, should be aware that different mentoring functions are influenced by differentrnfactors. For example, formal mentoring programs appear to have a greater impact on career mentoringrnfunctions than on psychosocial mentoring functions. To support women in their careers, companiesrnshould institute formal mentoring programs; this is especially important in South American countries.rnMoreover, mentoring programs must be designed to be adaptive since the analyses indicated that therernare significant differences by country in terms of many mentoring issues.rnOriginality/value - In the literature review, the paper finds linkages between culture, mentoringrnpractices, characteristics of mentors and mentees, and mentoring functions, but no evidence that thesernlinkages have been studied with a group of professionally successful women from different Americanrncountries, particularly non-English speaking American countries.