Mentoring Women: Identifying, Developing, and Retaining STEM Star

Women have made significant strides towards gender equality, particularly in education completion and labor force participation rates. Women make up about half of the total population in the United States, receive 57% of the awarded undergraduate degree as of 2010, and are evenly represented in STEM education, earning 50% of STEM bachelor degrees in 2012 ( The World Bank Group, 2014; AAUW, n.d.; The National Science Foundation, 2015). Nevertheless, when it comes to translating their STEM degrees to the workforce, women remain seriously under-represented in both jobs held, and in leadership positions. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between education and work-place practices that might be pushing women out of STEM fields, and those supporting women to stay. This study is a focus on the latter, particularly looking at the role of mentoring in professional stem fields. Drawing on literature from women in leadership, gender and STEM, and mentoring in the workplace, this study specifically asks what relationship formal mentoring has to women's career trajectory in STEM fields, and more specifically, how mentoring relationships are formed, how they change over time, how mentoring impacts career development and what significance these factors have on retention of women as STEM stars.