Mentoring – An Instrument to Promote Equality in Science and Research: Status Quo, New Developments, and Challenges

In the university context, mentoring has long been one of the key measures used to promote gender equality. Accordingly, a range of information is available on the acceptance, implementation and performance of mentoring programmes for women at universities. A number of projects for researchers have already been evaluated and adapted in line with the findings. Yet current developments in higher education policy on the one hand and contemporary literature on mentoring on the other have raised a number of questions that have not as yet been discussed. These are the questions that will be addressed in particular in this anthology: Which challenges confront mentoring programmes at present? To what extent do existing mentoring programmes need to be adapted or developed further? What is needed to open up the mentoring programmes established as measures to advance women to other diversity groups as well? What potential does the development of mentoring in a sponsorship direction hold? Can mentoring programmes which have proved their worth in the university sector be transferred to the non-university sector?