A paper was recently published in Nature Communications that looks into mentorship within scientific fields. One section of the study looked into how the genders of the mentor and mentee played a role in their success during and after the mentorship.

One of the findings from this study: “opposite-gender mentorship may actually increase the impact of women who pursue a scientific career”. In other words, women in science would be better off with a male mentor instead of a female mentor.

I’m sorry, what?!

This finding has outraged the #WomenInSTEM community on Instagram, and rightly so!

Here are some quotes from the study: (you can read the full study here)

• “Our study […] suggests that female protégés who remain in academia reap more benefits when mentored by males rather than equally-impactful females.”
• “Our findings also suggest that mentors benefit more when working with male protégés rather than working with comparable female protégés, especially if the mentor is female.”
• “Our gender-related findings suggest that current diversity policies promoting female–female mentorships, as well-intended as they may be, could hinder the careers of women who remain in academia in unexpected ways. Female scientists, in fact, may benefit from opposite-gender mentorships in terms of their publication potential and impact throughout their post-mentorship careers.”

I do give the authors credit for noting that the discrepancies may have come from societal differences between women and men over the years: “…[I]t should be noted that there are societal aspects that are not captured by our observational data, and the specific mechanisms behind these findings are yet to be uncovered. One potential explanation could be that, historically, male scientists had enjoyed more privileges and access to resources than their female counterparts, and thus were able to provide more support to their protégés.” (my emphasis, not the paper’s)

My Mentorship Experience

Personally, I’ve never had a mentor during my science career.

I’ve had teachers who saw my strength in science and encouraged me to keep going (thanks Mrs. Leonard from kindergarten, Mrs. Scheer from 1st grade, and Dr. Frank from 7th grade), but I wouldn’t consider any of them mentors.

I had a professor in undergrad who taught extremely well and helped me realize I wanted to go into toxicology (thanks Dr. Saliby), but he wasn’t a mentor to me either.

I had people who were there through my Master’s program during my classes and research, but I never felt truly supported by them or comfortable enough to go to them when I needed help, so they definitely weren’t mentors for me.

There was one lab professor who I admired during grad school: she was a great example of someone who was excellent at their job (and wasn’t afraid to say that), and still found fun ways to express her personality and time to do what she loved outside of work. I would have loved for her to be a mentor at the time, but honestly… I was too afraid to ask.

Would having a mentor have helped me get through my Master’s program with less headaches and stress? Probably. Would I have been more comfortable and open with a woman as my mentor? Absolutely.

The idea that women can’t be good mentors to other women is asinine, and needs to be dropped immediately. I understand that the authors of this paper may have meant well, and studying mentorship within scientific fields definitely has importance, but I don’t think this is one of the conclusions they should have made. They could have noted that based on the discrepancies observed, female mentors should have more resources given to them in order to help both mentor and mentee succeed, instead of just saying that women would be better off with male mentors. This paper could have been used as a way to prove that there is a gender gap in scientific fields and that women deserve the same resources that men get… Instead, the authors fed into that bias by saying we should just stick to the men, and that issue needs to be addressed.

What do you think about this paper? Did you have a woman as a mentor during your STEM journey?