Keywords

8.1 Introduction

The underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers, especially in engineering, is well documented in the literature (Cadaret et al., 2017; Dennehy & Dasgupta, 2017; Hernandez et al., 2017; Koul, 2018). UNESCO (2017) reports that the global average share of female students enrolled in higher education in engineering, manufacturing, and construction programs is 27%. In Chile, the 2020 enrollment of women in technology-based careers (including engineering) is 24% (MCTCI, 2020).

This phenomenon is generally seen as a problem that goes beyond a feminist claim for equity. Indeed, the lack of diversity in the STEM workforce has been argued to have negative consequences for scientific innovation, creativity, and social relevance (Hernandez et al., 2017). Therefore, incorporating more women would help broaden the diversity of product design and problem-solving perspectives and add greater rigor in decision-making. In addition, this increase would help satisfy the global shortage of engineering professionals (Smith, 2017; Steenkamp et al., 2017; Stelter et al., 2021) and, because of the present feminization of poverty, would impact poverty reduction. Broadening the participation of women in STEM disciplines calls for new learning/teaching methodologies and new support programs that enhance college experiences and other motivators for academic persistence.

The factors that explain this lower participation are varied: gender/occupation stereotypes (Bonaldi & Silva, 2014; Cadaret et al., 2017; Powell et al., 2012; Salikutluk & Heyne, 2017; Stout et al., 2011), beliefs about competence and self-efficacy (Cadaret et al., 2017; Cech et al., 2011; Falco & Summers, 2019; Marra et al., 2009); previous academic preparation, prosocial orientation, school and family socialization from an early age, and lack of role models in engineering, among others. This last factor is of special concern in this paper. Minority groups—such as women in engineering—have less access to role models, with whom to identify personally and socially. Majority groups, such as white men, have the opportunity to interact informally and regularly with various individuals that may serve as mentors to them (Whittaker & Montgomery, 2012). In the case of women in STEM, these interactions often need to be intentional because there are fewer opportunities for them to occur spontaneously.

Mentoring is often used and recommended to attract and retain women in STEM programs (Dennehy & Dasgupta, 2017; Hernandez et al., 2017; Stelter et al., 2021; Stoeger et al., 2017; Ziegler et al., 2019). In fact, given that retention rates in engineering careers are traditionally low, mentoring programs have been recommended regardless of student gender (Lim et al., 2017). In the case of women in engineering, the potential benefits of mentoring may include addressing risks common to students of all social groups as well as those more specific to female students, such as the aforementioned access to role models in engineering.

With this in mind, we designed a mentoring program for female students at the Industrial Engineering School at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV) in Chile. The program was planned for May 2021 and it came into being in June of the same year. Our goal was to facilitate the development and strengthening of our first- and second-year students’ professional identities. Recent advances in the theory of professional development in STEM suggest that students’ professional identity is critical to their motivation toward their career and to improving retention rates. A solid engineering identity means that students have come to see themselves as engineers and have a sense of belonging to the discipline community (Hernandez et al., 2017).

One of our concerns about potential difficulties for running this program was consistent with what is reported in the literature on mentoring minority groups in STEM: the availability of mentors from those underrepresented groups (Whittaker & Montgomery, 2012). Female incoming students to engineering fields will typically find few upper-level female students, few female faculty, and few female graduates.

The motivation for this study originally derived from this concern, and we deemed it important to understand the motivations of mentors, the benefits they perceive from mentoring, and the roles they play for their mentees, in order to successfully strategize and design our mentorship program. However, as the reader will notice, during the course of our study, we enhanced the scope of our analysis from addressing perceived benefits and motivations to now focus on ways of making sense and giving purpose to their involvement in mentorship. With this shift, we now also address mentorship more fully as a practice: a set of social relationships and interactions in a community, which revolve around a good that is produced as a result of those interactions and whose standards of excellence are defined within the community itself (Macintyre, 1984). Of course, someone can be motivated to engage in practice for instrumental reasons; for instance, when one obtains some remuneration for doing so. But it is when the production or achievement of these practice-defining goods becomes a motivator for someone to engage in that practice that it becomes a source of meaning and sense. In the case of mentorship, more particularly, we identified these goods as being characterizable in terms of caring, as understood in the ethics of care framework (Gilligan, 1993; Noddings, 2012; Tronto, 1998; Tronto & Fisher, 1990). As such, it provided an appropriate frame for interpreting the motivations for senior (upper-year) students and graduates (alumni) to become and remain mentors.

Therefore, the purpose of this study is to inquire about how mentors in the Industrial Engineering mentorship program for female students at PUCV make sense of their mentorship practice.

8.2 Mentoring Female Engineering Students

Mentoring broadly indicates a relationship in which a more experienced person—the mentor—provides advice to a less expert person—the mentee (Meschitti & Smith, 2017). Mentoring, defined as a relationship of professional assistance between the mentor and the mentee, is fundamental for the professional development and wellbeing of the mentees, as well as for the promotion of diversity and equal access in engineering education (Long et al., 2018). Alternative definitions focus on the relationship between mentee and mentor: “a developmental relationship that is intended to support the growth of the learner or protégé forward, involving a constellation of mentors with different assets and skills” (Mondisa et al., 2021).

Mentoring may be implemented across all academic trajectories, stages of development, training opportunities, and career pathways (Meschitti & Smith, 2017; Stelter et al., 2021). Some programs focus on academic support, research training, social integration, or professional identity development. Some programs are formal, with clear expectations, evaluation, or feedback. Others are informal and flexible. Mentoring programs may be voluntary for mentors or mentees, or mandatory. Mentors may be assigned, or they may select their mentee. Mentorship may be carried out in a one-on-one relationship or in group settings, with one or more mentors at a time. They may be face-to-face or virtual. Mentors may be peers (slightly older or more experienced students or colleagues) or senior members or an organization (i.e., professors, managers, industry professionals).

One common aim of many mentors in engineering programs is to attract and retain students and professionals to the discipline, be it high school students considering STEM careers, university students unsure of their career path, graduate students selecting their research area, faculty on tenure track (Meschitti & Smith, 2017) or junior professionals seeking career advancements in an organization (Allen, 2003).

For women in male-dominated fields, research indicates that broader networks of mentors are associated with greater benefits for mentees (Hernandez et al., 2017). The success of STEM mentoring programs for underrepresented groups depends on the engagement of students and the commitment of mentors (Whittaker & Montgomery, 2012). We examine next the mentorship practice focusing on characteristics of the mentor.

8.2.1 Mentor Roles

Among the three main functions of mentoring are career development, psychosocial support, and role modeling (Long et al., 2018). However, each stage of a person’s development may require different roles and attributes from the mentor (Allen et al., 1997).

In the mentoring of engineering students, mentors challenge their students to expand their comfort zone (Meschitti & Smith, 2017), they sponsor, counsel, and help them overcome barriers and plan their careers (Crisp & Cruz, 2009). They also help them develop technical skills (Mondisa et al., 2021) and a sense of belonging. One role that industry professionals provide when mentoring is access to their networks, resources, and position to offer their mentees meaningful professional experiences and opportunities. Women mentees often seek support and guidance on issues that go beyond academic topics (Daniels et al., 2019), and mentors should be able to identify and play this role.

8.2.2 Mentor Attributes

Mentors use their cognitive, relational, and emotional abilities to engage their mentees (Johnson, 2003). The mentoring role requires several personal attributes, including the ability to listen, reflect, tell stories, teach/learn, showcase different career paths and the ability to assist their mentees. Roberts (2000) identifies contingent mentoring attributes such as coaching, sponsoring, and role modeling. Mentors often have a prosocial disposition, with characteristics such as “other oriented-empathy”, helpfulness, generosity, and kindness (Allen, 2003). Mentors are proactive, rather than reactive, as mentoring involves the active choice to form a caring bond with others (Mayseless, 2015).

8.2.3 Motivations

The motivators to become a mentor are mostly of an intrinsic nature. Self-determination theory postulates that people are intrinsically motivated by competence (a feeling of mastery or perception that growth and success are possible), autonomy (the initiative and ownership of one’s actions), and relatedness (a sense of belonging and connection) (Ryan & Deci, 2020). People are intrinsically motivated to purposefully look for opportunities, situations, and relationships in which they can provide care, and experience the intrinsic satisfaction of realizing that their care has benefited others (Mayseless, 2015). Providing care, then, can be considered as a source of motivation for mentors.

Beltman and Schaeben (2012) distinguish several rewards to being a peer mentor, such as opportunity for networking, camaraderie and collaboration, sense of satisfaction for helping people, increased confidence and connectedness, the acquisition or improvement on professional and organizational skills, and the development of confidence or empathy. Benefits from networking, friendships, personal growth, and skill development can be also seen as motivators to mentors. In their study of graduate/postdoctoral mentoring undergraduate students in research, (Dolan & Johnson, 2009) identified two main motivators for mentors: one was instrumental and involved improving their research productivity and meeting the implicit or explicit expectations of the research group, and the other was socio-emotional and was related to personal enjoyment and a desire to share expertise.

Allen (2003) identifies similar motivators in workplace mentoring: helping others succeed in the organization (benefiting others), a sense of pride from mentees accomplishments (personal satisfaction), learning, and career success (self-enhancement). Managers with previous experience as mentors tend to volunteer again, but when deciding whether to mentor or not, they evaluate the cost of mentoring (time and personal energy invested) (Malota, 2019).

8.3 Case Study Overview

Engineering programs in Chile range from 10 to 12 semesters long and grant both a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (after completion of the 8th semester) and a professional title. Students choose their engineering specialty early on (often when they apply to the university) with insufficient information regarding potential career paths. One established reason for student dropout and for the gender gap in attraction and access to engineering programs is the lack of professional identification. Although upper-year female students and female faculty contribute to a positive academic experience and are great role models for younger female students, engineering graduates that work in the industry provide better examples of professional career paths and are helpful in developing students’ engineering identity. Although the coordination of face-to-face mentorship meetings with engineers working in the field is often difficult, the much higher availability of mentors for online meetings compensates for the loss of intimacy or closeness.

While there is abundant literature on the importance of the connection between mentors and mentees (Dennehy & Dasgupta, 2017; Hernandez et al., 2017), and on the impact of such programs on mentees (Budny et al., 2010; Dennehy & Dasgupta, 2017; Hernandez et al., 2017), research on the benefits for mentors is scarce (Allen, 2003; Beltman & Schaeben, 2012; Rangel et al., 2021; Stelter et al., 2021).

Thus, we wanted to investigate the motivations mentors have when volunteering for an online mentoring program. We study two types of volunteer mentors, peer mentors (senior students) and industry professional mentors (female engineering graduates). The mentees in this program are first- and second-year female students at an engineering school.

This study centers on an online mentoring program (using video call and chat rooms) for female engineering students. It is a 2-phase mixed study addressing mentor motivations and benefits. In the first, quantitative, phase we analyze mentor responses to a 28-item Likert-scale questionnaire that enquired about the importance of motivations for mentoring. We then used the results of this quantitative phase to identify relevant issues that were worth exploring deeper. In a second, qualitative phase, we set up focus groups where some of the program mentors interpreted those relevant issues and connected them to their own personal experiences, exploring what made mentorship a meaningful activity for them to be involved in.

The setting of this study is the Industrial Engineering program at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in Chile. While the University has 17,000 students, 43% of whom are women (29% women in STEM programs and 57% women in non-STEM programs), the industrial engineering program houses 1000 students, of whom 33% are women, a percentage that has not increased in the last 10 years.

A call was sent via internal networks to senior students and industrial engineering graduates (alumni) to volunteer as mentors during one semester. Simultaneously, we invited first- and second-year female students in industrial engineering to register for the mentorship program. A total of 56 mentees, 22 senior student mentors, and 18 alumni mentors were enrolled. These participants were assigned to 8 groups composed of 4 to 6 mentors and 6 to 8 mentees. In each group, the team of mentors was composed of both graduate mentors and senior student mentors.

Prior to starting the program, we held a mentor training session and provided participants with a guide that compiled tips and good practices for mentoring sessions. Mentors were, however, enticed to adapt this material and design session to their own liking, as the main objective was to engage students in conversation and answer their questions. Senior student mentors served as coordinators, setting up different informal chat groups to facilitate both the task of organizing the session with their team of mentors and the meeting date with their group.

8.4 Looking into Mentor Motivations

The research results of Beltman and Schaeben’s study (2012), which looked at peer mentoring of university students across all academic programs for both men and women, served as the basis for the first phase of our study. Beltman and Schaeben (2012) addressed the anticipated benefits of being a mentor, as stated by students when they apply to become mentors. They analytically identified four categories of self-reported benefits by mentors: Altruistic, Cognitive, Social, and Personal Growth. Roughly, altruistic benefits are related to the enjoyment and satisfaction of helping people. Cognitive benefits include learning new information, acquiring new skills, or improving existing skills. Social benefits are related to networking, interacting with other students, or developing friendships with them. Personal growth benefits involve self and personal development and mentors’ reflections on their own experiences and growth.

These categories and subcategories were the basis for our mentor questionnaire. We translated them and constructed 28 items (available in Table 8.1), each of them consisting of an assertion whose relevance respondents were asked to rate as factors that contributed to their decision to become mentors. We had 17 responses out of 22 student mentors, and 11 responses out of 18 graduate mentors.

Table 8.1 Principal component analysis for mentor motivations
Full size table

The reliability measurement (Cronbach’s Alpha) obtained was 0,909, which suggests that these items may be close to each other in meaning. But this closeness does not mean that all of them point in exactly the same direction. As we wanted to reveal their inner structure, however, not analytically as in Beltman and Schaeben’s study, but in the perspective of the program mentors, we carried out an analysis of principal components. Indeed, it did not support the four categories of motivators (benefits) proposed by Beltman and Schaeben (2012) in their study. Instead, as shown in Table 8.1, we found two principal factors (components) which seem to relatively neatly distinguish self-focused motivations (e.g., development of self-confidence, social skills or improvement of their CV) from other-focused motivations (e.g., sharing their experience, inspiring other women, being available for the needs of others, satisfaction for helping others) (Allen et al. 1997). Only one of these items does not appear to fit this characterization (Training to be a mentor seems interesting and relevant).

The reliability within component 1 (self-focused motivations) was very high, with Cronbach’s α = 0,925, as it was within component 2 (other-focused motivations), with Cronbach’s α = 0,844. But there seems to be a clear difference between the two components, both analytically and in the results obtained.

When using the calculation of each of the two components as an index, with C1 as a measure of relevance for self-focused motivations and C2 for other-focused motivations, the difference becomes apparent. Beyond the fact that the differences between the means of the two components were statistically significant (with p-values <0.001 for t-Student, Wilcoxon and Z tests), they are substantively significant. Remarkably, the mean difference (0.593) corresponds to almost 15% of the theoretical range for these variables (1–5). Respondents were more inclined to take other-focused motivations as more relevant for explaining their decision to become mentors than self-focused ones.

This distinction between the two components can be further elaborated. It can be seen in Table 8.1 that the items that contribute to C2 are generally much more intrinsically and directly related to the purposes of mentorship; that is, the relationship between them and mentorship is not contingent but, instead, is central to the goods that are pursued by the practice of mentorship. On the contrary, the items that contribute to C1 are generally much more contingently connected to the practice of mentorship, and the benefits they refer to might rather easily be obtained by getting oneself involved in other, different, practices. For instance, enriching one’s curriculum vitae, developing social skills, and building up one’s confidence can be side results of many other activities completely unrelated to mentorship and can hardly be seen as what this practice pursues. But sharing one’s experience and knowledge with others, inspiring other women, and being available for others when they need it is much more clearly connected to what makes mentoring the practice that it is.

Interestingly, although for both groups of mentors the other-focused component is more relevant than the self-focused component, this difference is markedly larger in the case of graduate mentors as compared with senior student mentors. Additionally, in the self-focused component, statistically significant differences were found between both groups of mentors. On the other hand, for the other-focused component, the results for both groups are similar (Table 8.2).

Table 8.2 Descriptive statistics of components by mentor type (student/graduate)
Full size table

Additionally, a Mann–Whitney U test for comparing the two groups (student mentors and graduate mentors) shows a p-value of 0,007 for the differences between the two components. This indicates that, in fact, graduate mentors mark a much clearer difference between the two components.

It may be perhaps surprising that senior students seem to be similarly motivated by the other-focused component to become mentors when compared with graduates. The fact that they had much more recently been junior students themselves could justify an expectation for them to be more empathetic toward their mentees than graduates who had gone through that experience much longer ago. In regard to the significant difference between the two groups of mentors—concerning their motivations based on expected individual gains/benefits—it can be speculated that this difference could be a result of the broader take on life and work of graduates when compared to senior students, most of whom have not yet had the opportunity to work. Additionally, many of the skills represented in the items that contribute to C1 may refer to competencies that graduates have already developed or that they can develop in their workplace.

Besides the fact that the items contributing to C2 are for the most part directly connected to the goods that define the practice of mentorship, when looked at closely, and as we will explain in more detail in the following section, these other-focused motivations are at the same time instances of caring. And that is what we will now turn to.

8.5 Caring

Caring is an emotion, a bond, and a behavior that manifests everywhere around us (Mayseless, 2015). It can be understood as “a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Tronto & Fisher, 1990). As such, these motivations are aligned with a way of seeing the university more as a site of personal relations of solidarity that are aimed at repairing and maintaining our world, than as a site of transactions that different actors conduct while each of them seeks their own benefit, as, for example, in a market. All this suggests that mentorship can appropriately be taken as a caring practice.

According to Noddings (2002), care is basic to human life. “Natural care”, therefore, is a moral attitude: a longing for the goodness that arises from the experience or memory of being cared for. Noddings explores the notion of ethical care: a state of being in a relationship, characterized by receptivity, affinity, and fascination. Receptive attention is an essential characteristic of an affective encounter. The caregiver is open to what the cared-for is saying and what they might be experiencing, and he/she is able to reflect upon it. However, there is also a motivational drive. In other words, the “motor energy” of the caregiver flows into who is cared-for. The caregiver thus responds to care in a way that is hopefully helpful. For this to be called “caring”, it also requires some recognition from those receiving care. Caring implies a connection between caregiver and cared-for, and on a certain degree of reciprocity; that both benefit from the encounter in different ways and both give something to the relationship.

The ethics of care emphasizes that caring relationships between humans are part of what marks us as human beings (Gilligan, 1993; Noddings, 2002; Tronto, 1998; Tronto & Fisher, 1990). We are always interdependent beings. Throughout life, human beings need and receive care and take care of others. There is a motivational aspect to ethics of care-related actions (care as a response to a feeling) and there is a cognitive aspect that arises from the memory of having been cared-for (Torras, 2013). According to Tronto and Fisher (1990), caring can be seen as a process with four intertwined phases: caring-about, caring-for, caregiving, and care receiving (see Table 8.3). Viewing care as a process stems from the fact that each phase feeds the next. However, they should not be seen as standing in a strict sequence, as there is always a toing and froing between them. Moreover, these phases can either be performed by a single person or divided between different individuals or groups. Table 8.3 further develops these phases of care and the moral element or dimension that each involves.

Table 8.3 Tronto’s four phases of care
Full size table

Once we realized that one of the factors found in the principal components analysis pointed more directly in the direction of the goods pursued by the practice of mentorship and that these goods could be characterized as care, we decided to put care right in the center of the framework for our analysis of the qualitative data collected by means of the focus groups. That is what we present in the following section.

8.6 Understanding How Mentors Care

In phase 2 of our study, we organized 4 focus groups, two for student mentors and two for graduate mentors. In total, 13 student mentors and 6 graduate mentors participated in these focus groups. During sessions, we discussed some of the results obtained in the quantitative phase by prompting mentors with questions such as “What triggered you to say: ‘yes, I want to be a mentor’?, What reflections arose when making this decision?”, “How is participating in this experience valuable or satisfactory to you?”, “What effect did the sharing of your story have on you?”, or “What have you learned about yourself during this process?”.

As we will see, the caring nature of mentorship became manifest in the mentors’ responses, as it showed to be the source of meaning and purpose for their involvement in the program. Its orientation toward the needs of others, in this case, the mentees, not as something done upon them as imposed from the outside, but as being there for them, is revealed in the following quote from one of the student mentors:

In the end, impacting doesn’t have to do with changing how they [the mentees] think, or their vision of the future, but simply is related with them not feeling that they are alone in this. SM4.Footnote 1

We have pointed out that in the case of mentoring programs for underrepresented groups in engineering, the opportunities for those who belong to these groups to be mentored are reduced by the shortage of mentors from the same social groups. It is especially important to design and manage mentoring programs with attention to aspects that may affect the motivation of the mentors.

Based on the findings of this study, we will examine and discuss the elements that can affect the motivation of mentors under the scope of the four phases of care.

8.6.1 Caring About

The moral element of the caring-about phase is attentiveness. Attentiveness is a practice that develops over time, in the process of acquiring experience in becoming a mentor. Initially, when they get involved in the program, their attentiveness is inevitably a projection from their experience with others in a situation that they judge similar to that of the mentees. Perhaps they have been attentive to others in the past and approach their mentees from this working hypothesis or intuition about the kind of caring they might need.

Mentors refer to their own experiences and to what they have observed with peers or as teaching assistants to younger students. They identify that first-year students need counseling during difficult stages of life, such as in the transition between high school and university.

When I was a teaching assistant at a [college preparatory] program, I noticed that many high school students felt very lost. I felt that becoming a mentor would give me a similar chance to help. The first years at the university are difficult and many students live them in silence. Mentoring is also a way to give them confidence and share my similar experiences. SM1.

I was a teaching assistant to first-year students and saw the uneasiness of students who didn't know anyone at school. From my own experience, I know that having someone senior to whom to ask questions helps a lot. GM1.

Sometimes that previous experience of feeling the need to be cared about is their own. There is evidence of a motivating force in mentors, resulting from having survived the difficult moments of the first years of university studies. They feel that sharing these experiences contribute to making this process more enjoyable for other people.

It is always motivating to be invited to take part in these types of activities [referring to the mentoring program] and to be able to contribute as well. We all go through different stages where we experience discomfort, especially during transitions such as entering a university program. I was very motivated by the possibility of giving back and sharing what I learned, making the path easier for newcomers. SM2.

As the caregiver attends, they are likely to experience a motivational shift (Noddings, 2012). In the mentoring program, this means that the mentor redirects her care efforts toward noticing and understanding the needs and goals of the mentee, no longer as a projection of her previous experiences but in present time, and with real rather than imagined persons.

I had to update my view on gender issues: for me [when in school] the issue was that women were not being considered, (…) smart topics or technical questions were answered by men (…) but for the girls in my group this is not an issue … for them the difficulties have to do with confidence (…) they see their [male] peers a lot more empowered than themselves, and this is a new problem that we have to work with (…) I realized I was thinking of working on the problems I had when I was in school (…) but that has been updated, and it has been great to learn this. GM1.

I had already been a mentor to engineering graduates in an organizational context. In this program, the group setting was difficult for me, different from my one-on-one mentoring experiences. In the company there is a strategic plan, common areas and tools that connected me with the mentees. Here in the university the challenges of the mentees are more ambiguous, more personal. GM5.

Initially in the program, mentors connected with the needs of mentees by recalling their own experiences and difficulties as female engineering students. Experiences with choosing to study a traditionally male profession, and with different steps in their career path (selecting a major, finding an internship, joining the workforce, advancing in their career). Once the mentoring relationship began, however, mentors updated their understanding of what mentees needed. Relying on their autonomy and on the ability to perceive what is needed was key to detecting new opportunities for care. A mentor demonstrates empathic accuracy when what she infers of a mentee’s feelings and thoughts corresponds to what the mentee really feels and thinks (Ickes, 1993). The concept of empathic accuracy raises the question of whether our knowledge of another person's mind proceeds in an egocentric or detached way (Stueber, 2006).

Care has both cognitive and affective dimensions (Noddings, 2012). Dialog is essential to building relationships of care and trust. “Within a well-established relation, we are more likely to achieve empathic accuracy” (Noddings, 2012). In this way, the mentor is prevented from attributing to the mentees the feelings she had or would have under similar conditions. The ethics of care requires the mentor to think about how the other (mentee) feels, not how they would feel under the same circumstances.

This is similar to what Noddings (2012) asserts about the teacher-carer: a mentor-carer listens receptively to mentees. Mentors may recognize that mentees’ concerns/interests differ from their preconceptions. In this case, a conflict may arise if the mentor values the original program design as it aligns with her own past experiences and needs. To respond in a caring way, mentors need time to build a caring and trusting relationship with their mentees. This way mentees and mentors can together choose a suitable course of action to address their needs. In any case, the time spent building the relationship will likely be a worthwhile experience for both parties.

8.6.2 Caring For

The decision to join a volunteer mentoring program, with no compensation, monetary or otherwise, demonstrates intrinsic motivation. Caring-for implies being intrinsically motivated to take responsibility. After considering their own experiences, mentors perceive helping mentees to be their moral responsibility. As a program that does not provide monetary rewards, this moral boost is an important motivator for mentors.

I felt it was my duty to pass my experience on to the younger generations. To tell them not to let stress take over, especially during the first years, and to seek help early on. SM3.

To me, being a mentor is like volunteering for something great. SM4.

I turned out all right, but I had a really hard time when I was studying engineering. The mentees may be living the same situations that I had to live. It motivates me to share my experience so that they do not have such a difficult time (…). It is my way of showing solidarity. GM2.

Mentors, who as students did not have the opportunity to be mentees express how useful that experience would have been for them. This reflection creates a sense of responsibility and desire to volunteer as mentors. Conversely, those that were mentored as students recognize how important it was for them—how that person made a difference in their life—and they too wish to pay back by becoming mentors themselves.

My motivation to join had to do with what I experienced in my first year when I was part of a mentoring program. My mentor then was the same faculty that invited me to this program. Her invitation reminded me of how helpful the program had been for me (…) I thought I could reciprocate as a peer mentor. SM5.

Caring in a mentoring relationship goes beyond feeling with the other; it involves acting on behalf of the other. It involves taking responsibility for the welfare of another (Lawrence & Maitlis, 2012).

Mentors’ attendance in the program was nearly perfect, unlike the mentees whose attendance was erratic. Their studies, jobs, and personal life would have been perfect excuses for not participating, especially because they didn’t personally know the people they were mentoring. What moved them from a caring-about to a caring-for attitude? When mentors talk about why they decided to take on the responsibility of being mentors, it is evident that they are moved by feelings of compassion and “fellow-feeling for others” (Noddings, 2002). Unlike other programs, this is an online program that was designed to allow for flexibility and considerable autonomy from the mentoring groups, which are conditions that might be motivating mentors to directly execute the care, instead of channeling their caring-about interest through over venues (such as charity work).

8.6.3 Caregiving

Mentors evaluate or discover their competence to teach and accompany others; their achievements and experiences substantiate this competence.

I was unsure if my message was going to be adequate: I believe that it is possible and right to reconcile personal life with academic life, that university is not everything. I wondered if this message was in line with the goals of the mentoring program. But knowing that I would mentor with graduates gave me confidence, I wouldn’t be alone, and I could learn from them [graduate mentors]. SM7.

For the proper development of a mentoring relationship, the mentor must perceive herself as competent in her role. The limited knowledge or inexperience regarding what happens during a mentoring session, or the preconception that mentoring is like academic tutoring, made some mentors initially second-guess their ability to make any contribution to first- or second-year engineering students. Once they realized how meaningful it was for their mentees to listen to their point of view or experience, they realized that they were competent to fulfill the role of mentor and they acted.

Our teachers gave us a structure for the mentoring sessions, but we eventually went off the script. We have been talking with the mentees about vocational issues and concerns, how to deal with failing a course, difficulties finding the first job, etc. They are difficult topics that we have discussed based on our experiences and that have been well received by the mentees. Deviating from the mentoring guide script I think has led us to something even better. SM6.

The mentoring literature describes different attributes of a competent mentor. According to Johnson (2003), the competence of a mentor is more than the sum of several skills; indeed, it is a structure that integrates various virtues, abilities, and focal skills that are deployed to serve the mentee. In this study, we are more interested in the mentors’ own perception of competence for the work entrusted and voluntarily adopted, and in their efforts to develop their own competence, than in a repertoire of possible attributes of a mentor as a caregiver. Technically, the mentor needs to have knowledge and resources to do a good job (Zembylas et al., 2014). However, as Tronto points out, competence is not just a technical consideration, it is also the moral dimension of caregiving (Tronto, 1998).

“Providing effective mentoring to others requires a considerable time investment on the part of the mentor and can put the perceived competence of the mentor at risk if the protégée performs poorly” (Allen, 2003).

According to the theory of self-determination, the sense of competence is a relevant element for a person’s motivation. Within the existing literature on women in engineering, self-perceived competence has been a recurring theme. Female engineering students rate themselves as less competent relative to their male peers, regardless of their grades (Jagacinski, 2013). While the literature refers to technical competence, this study reveals a similar pattern, as some mentors initially doubted their abilities and competence to mentor. We may also interpret this concern about competence as an indication of caring; that is, the moral element of caregiving in mentorship is reflected on the mentors’ attention to their own competence and their efforts to improve it, as the result of their wish to ensure to do a good job because they care about the wellbeing of their mentees.

8.6.4 Care Receiving

The role of the person receiving care is simple and crucial (Noddings, 2012). Demonstrating in some way that care has been received does not mean that the mentee should express gratitude, but rather responsiveness (e.g., showing up or asking questions).

In some of the mentoring groups, mentees’ attendance was not consistent. For mentors, investing their time and energy in preparing activities and then realizing that there is little response from mentees is demoralizing.

I wish the mentees had participated more (…) the graduate mentors contribute a lot in the sense of work and we in the sense of the university experience. SM7.

I thought: ah, the girls are going to love it, they are going to be super motivated, they are going to learn a lot, because who wouldn’t want to have this experience during their first years? (…) but participation has not been so high. I like to keep things under control, know how they arrive to the meeting and what they leave with. (…) For me this was very important, it was like a pre-conviction that motivated me to be a mentor. SM11.

On the other hand, it is satisfying for mentors to see signs that their sessions have an impact, even if it is modest, on the lives of their mentees.

It comforts me to see their faces of relief, that someone understands them, when they realize it is not me who has a black cloud, it is a normal process, everything happens step by step. GM4.

I didn’t realize in the beginning how satisfactory it was to help, but later I did (…) because the girls showed me. SM10.

Graduate mentors have a double source of reward as they not only see responsiveness from the mentees, but also from the senior students with whom they team to mentor. Senior students, unlike mentees, tend to speak forcefully about how helpful it is for them to talk to graduates.

It has been very interesting to meet the graduate mentors and to create ties with my peers in the mentoring team (…) I was worried about finding an internship but talking with them has made me feel I can solve it. I have felt their company. SM5.

We have all learned a great deal from the graduates, how they solve problems and how they deal with difficulties. It has been very interesting to hear from them that not everything is perfect, that entering the world of work is not necessarily easy. SM12.

In my case, networking was one of the main motivators. I saw it as a network for work, internships, and all that. SM3.

The expectation of future rewards beyond the mentoring program is also a motivator for mentors. The idea is that just as the mentors now cared for the mentees, if ever the former needs help, the latter or the other mentors will be there to support them.

What is relevant is the relationship between mentors and mentees (…) I don’t imagine a close relationship or a friendship forever, but a nurturing relationship, a relationship that contributes, that teaches you, that leaves reflections and a space of trust… a network for the future, for example. For me it was very important. SM13.

It was very satisfying to create a community (…) our mentoring was not just for first-year students, but the senior students [mentors] also benefited by sharing their problems and receiving our help (…) We identified with one another (…) I feel that if I ever need something this group is going to be there to help and support me. GM6.

To close the cycle of care, a response is needed from those who have been cared- for. In mentoring programs, mentors hope to see an impact on the mentees. Observing signs of relief, seeing that the students are calmer or have more confidence in themselves are aspects that mentors refer to as satisfactory and that allow them to positively evaluate their intervention. The baseline of the response is that mentees attend the sessions. For the mentors of some groups, the low and irregular attendance of mentees was discouraging.

The mentee's response, or lack thereof, involves evaluating the care provided by the mentors. This responsiveness can be interpreted as the degree to which the needs of the mentees have been satisfied in the sessions and activities carried out in this program.

In the program under study, this phase of care is the one that represented the greatest challenge. The online format of mentoring, which is of great advantage for summoning female mentors, may have played against the engagement of some mentees.

8.7 Conclusions and Recommendations

We undertook this study because, given the suitability of mentoring programs to attract and retain women in engineering, and the difficulty of finding female engineering students or graduates (precisely because they are few), it becomes important to understand what factors affect the motivation of women interested in assuming the role of mentor. In studying those motivators, we discovered that what is more important for the mentors in the program is the satisfaction related to pursuing the goods of the practice of mentorship, which is taken to be fundamentally a caring practice.

The framework of the ethics of care has been widely used in feminist literature as a way of understanding how relationships develop between human beings. This approach emerged as a critique of distant and abstract ethical frameworks that omitted basic relational values ​​such as caring or sympathy. In this study, the ethics of care and its phases allowed us to analyze and understand, from an ethical perspective, what drives mentors to enroll and persevere in a mentoring program for younger female students. Conceptualizing mentoring as a practice of care helped us to reveal the moral dimensions that together drive mentors to move from caring-about the gender gap in engineering to assuming responsibility for a specific other and acting upon it.

But we take it that the ethics of care should not only be useful for interpreting the practice of mentorship, but also for designing and adjusting the mentorship program. For instance, the ethics of care’s phases or dimensions may allow us to improve the selection process and the training sessions for mentors, and ensure they are relevant and focused on what really matters in the mentor–mentee relationship. It is about devising a program that is tailored to the needs of the mentee, and about working that disposition in the mentor. This framework directs us, predisposes us, and draws attention to certain topics that are generally not seen by program managers, but are important to mentors. For example, we have learned that it is important for mentors to receive a response from mentees, that mentees participate and show engagement with the program. This is, that participants show up after they said they would, answer emails or chat questions, turn on the camera during the online session, or give opinions during a conversation. After identifying this issue, we can review the design of future programs or implement changes to the ongoing program to help intention this participation without having to enforce it. Examples of such modifications are: signing a participation agreement with enrolled mentees before they are assigned to a mentoring group; sharing with mentors and mentees the expectations and behaviors observed in earlier programs; establishing increasing levels of participation/commitment based on observed behavior or declared interests; deciding that mentorship meetings be held in periods of low academic demands; or defining other means to provide timely feedback to mentors, such as offline or anonymous questionnaires.

Importantly, by understanding mentorship as a caring practice and designing mentorship programs in accordance with this view, we can contribute to establishing the university as a human place and to resisting the advances of a neoliberal culture that have been encroaching on it for the past decades. However, even caring may be marketized, as some authors have argued that has happened in the twenty-first century (Green & Lawson, 2011). The practice of care becomes a tradable asset, where caregivers care under a purely contractual relationship.

When caring is viewed as a commodity, the act of caring comes to be perceived as a matter of choice for the caregiver, who may accept (or not) responsibility for engaging in a dependent relationship with others. In a mentoring program with no external rewards for assuming this responsibility, the mentor voluntarily donates her time and energy to a cause she considers valuable regardless of who the mentees are, and thus all are included. A mentoring program such as the one described in this study distances “care” from a market logic and restores its “inherent to human nature” character.

Lastly, we would like to say that the relational nature of caring in itself suggests that this endeavor is a collective one, involving mentors and mentees as well as faculty. In Tronto’s words,

Caring should take place in an environment in which all of those engaged in caring –caregivers and care receivers as well as other responsible parties– can contribute to the ongoing discussion of caring needs and how to meet them. No single actors in a care process can assert their own authoritative knowledge in the process. Within the activity of caring itself, actors must continue to be attentive, responsible, competent, and responsive to the others in the caring process. (Tronto, 1998).