Mentoring women in mathematics
Women in science are significantly underrepresented. Female researchers in mathematics (as well as in other STEM fields) are underrepresented among their peers in most countries and on most career levels.The fact that the proportion of women decreases when moving to higher qualification levels and career stages is called the “leaky pipeline“ effect.
We want to counteract the leaky pipeline with mentoring programs for female mathematicians working in academia. We aim at providing women in mathematics with female mentors who can serve as their role models, support and encourage them, so that ultimately less female researchers drop out of the leaky pipeline.
We understand mentoring as a relationship based on an agreement among partners, which offers continuous and dynamic feedback among the partners, establishes a relationship through which an individual shares knowledge, skills, and information. It aims to foster the personal and professional growth of the mentee and does not exclude reverse mentoring.
Materials
We offer extensive materials for mentoring – free of charge and under a Creative Commons License. The materials include:
- a practical guide to implementing a mentoring program for women in mathematics,
- templates for promoting, administrating, and evaluating the mentoring program,
- a detailed description of the different modules of the mentoring training,
- the necessary materials for the mentoring training.
We encourage anyone to use these materials at their discretion and to modify and adjust them to different settings as they seem fit.