Start of the mentoring programmes

The two mentoring programmes of the Service Agency for Gender Equality - CoMento and empowerMINTDoc - kicked off on 23 March 2023 with a digital and interactive lecture by Dr Veronika Fuest on "Navigating the shark tank. Micropolitics in academia". She introduced her talk with the question: "Are you navigating the 'shark tank', trying to survive, feeling like a 'shark', or are you or are you actually in a peaceful 'goldfish pond'?" In Germany and elsewhere, researchers* are embedded in hierarchical constellations. Regardless of whether they are at the upper, middle or lower level of their organisation, they sometimes encounter irritating and even incomprehensible behaviour and results: Formal rules are circumvented, expertise and institutionally defined responsibilities may prove irrelevant in some decisions, rival camps may prevent reasonable cooperation. With the theoretical concept of micropolitics, Veronika Fuest provided a starting point for systematically recording phenomena of the everyday use of power in organisations. She gave students, academics and alumnae the opportunity to reflect on their own situation and pointed out micropolitical strategies that they can use themselves to survive in the shark tank.

Afterwards, participants and alumnae were invited to exchange their expectations and experiences in a mentoring programme. The new participants were thus able to benefit from the career biographies of the alumnae, while the alumnae in turn had the opportunity to hear what is currently being talked about at the University of Bayreuth and which exciting and forward-looking approaches are currently being discussed in the various disciplines.

For the participants of the empowerMINTDoc programme as well as for those taking part in CoMento, the introduction workshops with Dr. Elena Köstner followed the next day. In the following months, the participants can further educate themselves on various topics - scientific networking, body language and voice, life balance and self-organisation - they receive sessions with a professional coach or use the experience and informal knowledge of a mentor. They support each other in peer mentoring and meet role models to get impulses for their own careers from their career biographies.

It is often said that mentoring is old hat, which is of course true, as the origins of this concept lie in antiquity. However, if one looks at the history of mentoring in recent decades, its increasing spread and popularity, this statement is not true at all. Mentoring has evolved and adapted to the needs of female researchers and students in the academic world of the 21st century. Mentoring programmes such as CoMento and empowerMINTDoc can address systemic inequality and the drop out of female academics - and this is still necessary.