Before saying anything explicitly on the topic of mentorship and advice, I must acknowledge the origin of the title of this page: Lifting While We Climb. This phrase has become a widely-used motto and motivator today to encourage people who are experiencing some sort of marginalization to organize, build power within their organization, and empower their entire communities along the way. This phrase originates as the founding principle of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, founded in 1896. A racist, sexist letter published in 1895 led these women to catapult into action in fighting for their rights and recognition of their dignity. The origin of the phrase, "lifting while we climb," then, has important significance especially for African-descended women. As this piece currently does not include advice from interviewees who are African-descendants, I use this powerful motto as the page title to share historic words of wisdom from some pivotal African-descended women activists in the United States that can inspire many of us of multiple and distinct racial and ethnic identities still today.

Looking specifically at the sciences, enrollment by women in undergraduate and graduate programs in some disciplines has increased in the last few decades, but they hold a decreasing proportion of roles relative to males as one looks at more advanced career stages (e.g. tenure-track faculty and industry CEOs) (Lubenski et al., 2017). While science is not the only field where this happens, because the women I spoke with identify as scientists, and that is the area I have the most academic and experiential knowledge of this issue, the urgency of mentorship is discussed in relation to the sciences, broadly defined. Women continue to report being paid less and being promoted less often than similarly qualified males (DesRoches et al., 2010; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). This deficit of women in advanced career stages presents an obstacle to recruitment of more women to the field and mentorship of women in the field. Limited mentorship opportunities can further lead to increased attrition in the field as early career scientists lack visual representation of themselves in those positions and the support network necessary to succeed once there (Rolston, 2014). This is a serious concern for women and diverse populations in the sciences, as they have been found to have greater attrition rates from the field at every career stage (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2007). Existing literature suggests women have much less support and mentoring from faculty advisors across many fields (Fox, 2001; Nolan, Buckner, Marzabdi, & Kuck, 2008; Seagram, Gould, & Pyke, 1998). Further developing networking and mentoring opportunities for women, especially in the sciences, is essential to supporting their continued progress in the field (Rolston, 2014). Even as early as high school mentorship is extremely important in shaping where students see their future careers going. While there are certainly many efforts being organized to address the limited mentorship for women in the sciences, there is still much work to be done, especially for women who are also of at least one other marginalized identity (i.e. sexuality, physical ability, race, nationality).

“It’s difficult for me when your mentors can’t relate to you. My advisor was a white man…who was older than my dad, but …through friends and experiences he could understand what I was going through. But then I meet women of color [in my field] and I think, ‘Oh my god. If I had met you before, where could I be now?’”

“I remember working in this lab and having someone tell me for the first time, ‘You’re very good at this. When are you going to grad school? What is your next step?” And that was really awesome, but it was also really terrifying to realize no one had ever said those things to me before in my undergraduate career or any of the research facilities I had worked in, and it was so powerful…that’s someone I think about a lot as a mentor, and that’s someone I kept close to me in shaping my scientific career from that day forward. I…didn’t have that strong emotional connection to a mentor until after getting out of undergrad… It was the first female that I had worked for directly, and she was super confident, and super assertive, and everything I thought was the pinnacle of being a good scientist, but also she was very feminine, and she wasn’t hiding that. And I think that was the first time I saw that role model, where I could see those things combined, and just how cool it could be.”

Having representation and support has been integral to all of our career paths, both from women and men in the field. One woman noted that though it’s not officially mentorship, the support she and her fellow female graduate students showed one another was essential to having a sense of community she needed Another reiterated that a mentor does not always need to gain their expertise from age, and that there is a benefit to having multiple mentors:

“I realized I didn’t have enough mentors, and I gave my one advisor the role of many mentors, and that could be really exhausting for him. He did what he could, but I didn’t really understand the value of mentors until too late in my PhD. Now I know there are different types of mentors – sometimes they’re younger than you, sometimes they’re way older than you, but different types of people can give you support and guidance in certain areas. I’ve been working to diversify and multiply the mentors I have”

“I thought I couldn’t do so many things because I wasn’t the best at something, and that really limited me and my ability and my confidence, and I think the older I get, it’s not about being the best at anything, it’s about working hard. But I also think that’s confusing, because we put so much focus on getting people interested in science, and people are interested in science, right, but in order to work hard, you have to be interested, yes, but you also have to be well-supported. So, if you’re not feeling well-supported, I think it’s a good time to always step back and think, ‘why am I not being supported? And is this the right place for me?’ because, it doesn’t matter how hard you work if you don’t feel like you’re in an environment where you can excel. And had I known that earlier, I could have saved myself a lot of time.”

“For young scholars [of color, my advice is] to dig deep and understand their own experiences so that they can learn early on, at a young age, that a lot of what they experience is not about them. Because I do think we internalize a lot of these issues, and that can be really difficult, at least for me, when I’ve done that and I do it still all the time, for you emotional and mentally, it’s really taxing. When you internalize, it’s not fair to you, because it’s part of a bigger system. So I think recognizing that it’s not just about you. It’s not you that did something wrong, but we live in a system that’s not meant for you to succeed, it’s not meant for you to be on top. When you start to make it to those spaces and start to succeed, it always will feel like anything will happen and you’ll just fall all the way to the bottom, because that’s what the system wants you to do, that’s what it really does.”

“Find people to open up with. I wouldn’t say “don’t cry.” I’d say, cry. Cry all the time. Cry all the time if you need to, however it is that you need to express your emotions. Cursing, because that’s how I express a lot of my anger and frustration. Or crying, because I do that all the time….sometimes people mistake women crying for being weak, when women express their anger by crying. Men can get violent or get really verbal, or be really tense and you see that as a sign of strength. Women can’t do that, because it’s not socially acceptable so women cry. It’s okay for women to cry not men, and then women cry and that’s weakness. It’s this double standard: you can get angry and flip the table over, and go, ‘Oh you were so strong and you were angry.’ A woman starts crying, ‘You’re so weak.’ No, it’s the same emotion just expressed differently. I think that however people need to express their emotions, that’s fine.”

“I always had a tendency, even in grad school, to be a loner and isolate myself because I felt like that was how I was productive. Then I realized it was a bit self-defeating, because you learn a lot from connecting to other people, other people are resources for you, and you need interactions with others, and friendships, and relationship to be healthy, to be more resilient and mentally healthy. That was sort of a hard lesson learned…I would’ve been a lot happier and learned some of the things a lot earlier if I had realized [the importance of relationship and connection]”

Mentors, of any age and walk of life, can provide a great source of connection and support. These three women whose advice is above I agree with, and provided me reminders and advice I needed to hear myself. My own advice to whoever reads this is: be patient, get outside every day, take risks when you can muster the courage, take care of yourself always, build a support team for when you can’t take the best care of yourself, and be patient again.

References not linked internally

Fox, M. F. (2001). Women, science and academia: Graduate education and careers. Gender & Society, 15(5), 654–666.

Lubienski, S. T., Miller, E. K., & Saclarides, E. S. (2017). Sex Differences in Doctoral Student Publication Rates. Educational Researcher, XX(X), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17738746

Nolan, S. A., Buckner, J. P., Marzabadi, C. H., & Kuck, V. J. (2008). Training and mentoring of chemists: A study of gender disparity. Sex Roles, 58(3–4), 235–250.

Seagram, B. C., Gould, J., & Pyke, S. W. (1998). An investigation of gender and other variables on time to completion of doctoral degrees. Research in Higher Education, 39(3), 319–335.