Mentoring

Research shows that girls and women need role models to develop high aspirations for the future. With women becoming increasingly more involved in the workforce and in non-traditional, previously male-oriented careers, this review of literature examines career aspirations of women and presents an overview of women’s participation in the workforce and the progress of women’s career development and career aspirations in the latter half of the 20th century.

Formal mentoring programs have historically tended to match youth with same-sex mentors; more recently, mentoring programs designed specifically for girls have begun cropping up in response to theories on gender and adolescent girls’ psychological health and development, which suggest girls have particular psychosocial needs and ways of relating. Yet, there have been few empirical studies that explicitly examine the relational processes in adolescent girls’ relationships with female mentors from the perspectives of the participants themselves.Read more

Formal mentoring programs have historically tended to match youth with same-sex mentors; more recently, mentoring programs designed specifically for girls have begun cropping up in response to theories on gender and adolescent girls’ psychological health and development, which suggest girls have particular psychosocial needs and ways of relating. Yet, there have been few empirical studies that explicitly examine the relational processes in adolescent girls’ relationships with female mentors from the perspectives of the participants themselves.Read more

An important study was done of a formal mentoring program (matching adolescent girls with women mentors) executed by Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. The study reveals that these relationships provide strong emotional support and improvement in girls’ psychosocial functioning coupled with the development of new skills and confidence through collaborations in shared activities. This study is unique because it explicitly examines the relational processes in adolescent girls' relationships with female adult mentors from the perspective of the participants themselves.