Mentoring as a transformative process of gendered academic structutes. The pilot Programme by GENOVATE@UNINA

Abstract

Intervening in current debates about the effectiveness of mentoring as gender equality interventions in the academia, the paper argues for the need to move beyond an individual-structural dichotomy of such interventions. Drawing on previous literature and on the action-research case-study of the Mentoring Pilot Programme GENOVATE@UNINA, the idea that individual/single-actor interventions serve only to reinforce underlying inequalities is challenged. Only-women schemes have the potential to achieve a degree of transformation at individual, cultural and structural levels when such actions are designed with an understanding of how individuals embody the gendered and gendering social structures and values that are constantly being produced and reproduced within society. The case study highlights the benefits of supporting individuals as “gendered actors in gendering institutions” - following a bi-focal perspective already implied in the project Through the Glass Ceiling of the University College of Cork – while facilitating the development of critical gender awareness. It suggests that interventions are most effective when properly tailored as part of an integrated and institutional equality agenda.