Perceived Mentoring Fairness: Relationships with Gender,Mentoring Type,Mentoring Experience,and Mentoring Needs

While mentoring is often recommended as a careerenhancement strategy for men and women, this studyexamines perceptions of the fairness of mentoringrelationships. In this experiment, a total of 124 male and female participants provided dataconcerning their fairness perceptions in reaction tomentoring scenarios presented to them. A total of 49% ofthe sample were male and 51% were female and 82% were Caucasian, 12% were Asian American, 3% wereLatino American, and 3% were African American. Severalindividual factors such as past mentoring experiencesand having met mentoring needs as well as interactions with gender (by mentoring type, mentoringreceived, and met needs) were related to ratings offairness. In addition, past mentoring received andperceived fairness of mentoring were related to reportsof how much mentoring participants reported theyhad given others.