Perceived mentoring fairness: Relationships with gender, mentoring type, mentoring experience, and mentoring needs

While mentoring is often recommended as a career enhancement strategy for m en and women, this study examines perceptions of the fairness of mentoring relationships. In this experiment, a total of 124 male and female participa nts provided data concerning their fairness perceptions in reaction to ment oring scenarios presented to them. A total of 49% of the sample were male a nd 51% were female and 82% were Caucasian, 12% were Asian American, 3% were Latino American, and 3% were African American. Several individual factors such as past mentoring experiences and having met mentoring needs as well a s interactions with gender (by mentoring type, mentoring received, and met needs) were related to ratings of fairness. In addition, past mentoring rec eived and perceived fairness of mentoring were related to reports of how mu ch mentoring participants reported they had given others.