EQUALITY GUIdE - KU Leuven

Chapter 5 ! Mentoring 271
5.2. Mentoring at universities: supporting the happy few?
The aim of mentoring within this VLIR-EQUAL project is to support women to overcome
institutional and attitudinal barriers to academic advancement. But is this realistic
as a goal? Most of them (men and women) consider an academic career as a shortterm
and fixed-term perspective: ‘up or out’.
Offering mentoring as the one and only instrument to have a career in those conditions
is not right. Research on the relatively low response to the pilot project at UHasselt
indicates that the majority of the target group know their chances of a long-term career
are limited and do not aspire to a long-tem academic career. However, as mobility is
not self-evident or structurally embedded in the organization, mentoring is important to
those who do have the ambition and/or skills. That is why both in Hasselt and in Leuven
various mentors and mentees asked to “offer mentoring to all scientists, male and
female, so they can explore their possibilities”. The problem of the lack of career perspectives
is felt to surpass the gender gap.
It is typical of universities to have non-standard career paths Careers are built individually
in diverse contexts (department and field). As a result, the need to have a mentor
who is focused on long-term development, broader and more integrated learning and
personal wisdom conflicts with the need for short-term, immediately applicable skills.
This continuum is recognizable in both pilots: on the one hand there is the American
sponsorship model of ‘sharing knowledge’ and ‘giving advice’ and on the other, there
is the so-called European development model which focuses on ‘acquiring knowledge’
and ‘building the mentee’s insight and self-resourcefulness’. The question of practical
advice was primarily raised by mentees who recently moved up the academic ladder
(more senior than newly qualified PhD holders). To the extent that their mentor could
give them advice and information ! in most cases the mentor was a (non-hierarchical)
senior from their own field or department ! they were satisfied with the programme.
Furthermore, some mentees asked their mentor to help open up new horizons towards
learning opportunities and a wide variety of career-enhancing experiences. This proves
that it is crucial to prioritize the goals and to prepare the recruitment, selection and
matching profoundly. This also emphasizes the need to study the short- and long-term
effects of different kinds of mentoring within the academic world.