Effects of the same-gender vs. cross-gender mentoring on a protégé outcome in academia

Abstract

Mentoring seems to be an important way to start and advance individual researcher's career in science. Therefore, it is essential to examine the factors related to successful mentoring in order to find ways of efficiently supporting young academics on their career development path. Building on the similarity-attraction and social identity theories, our research indicates that gender similarity in academic mentoring might be related to the protégés' postdoctoral publication scores that lead to career advancement. The scores in a typical five-year publication cycle are higher for the protégés situated within same-gender mentoring dyads. Furthermore, the mentors' research performance importantly adds to the protégés' postdoctoral research performance.