Mentoring and Networking as the “Silver Lining” of Being Women Leaders: An Exploratory Study in Top World Forestry Schools

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting article and very pleasant to read. Overall, it is well written, but I do have some suggestions on how to make it stronger.

First of all, I suggest that the authors better motivate the focus on the forest (university?) sector. I was not quite sure at the beginning what they mean by forest sector: in general forest business or academic discipline. This needs to be clearly stated already in the introduction. Also, how is forest sector different or similar to other (university) sectors? This is needed to put the results in a perspective. In my opinion, many of the results stated here can be expanded to any male dominated academic discipline, and even female dominated disciplines. I would like to see at least half a page on the contextualization and motivation of this case study (as a representation of a wider phenomenon).

In addition, could you please specify what kind of jobs are done in the forest industry. What possibilities do (female) students have? Could you explain the typical trajectories in the university sector and outside of it?

As a second issue, I miss a whole section where the authors review the work of others, some empirical evidence on the same sector and on issues that are generally discussed, like mentoring, or female networking. The article needs to be positioned in the literature in order to be understood.

Finally, networking problem is a problem for women in each and every profession. I wonder in which way forest industry is different. I encourage the authors to motivate better their view that forestry sector is particularly different, or at least to situate it in a wider context because the mechanisms explained here are present in many other fields. Lack of female professors in high level positions is persistent in social sciences and humanities despite the fact they have a higher share of women than other fields; therefore the male networking is an issue even in female dominated fields.

Another suggestion is to narrow down the group of interest. Administrative leaders might have had their mentors throughout their career, but it is difficult to expect that they currently do also due to their experience and tenure. The positions given to deans or vice-deans are senior positions.  Also, mentorship is a process that is often less needed in later stages of a career. The question for this seniour group could have been if they were mentored and in which way (was that useful in their career?). I think that the results could be divided between past experiences and current experiences, giving it also perhaps a generational dimension.

I wish the authors best of luck in revising the article.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article investigates a critical issue: the integration of women in male-dominated fields through mentoring. The authors situate the article adequately in the political context of gender equality policies. The theoretical background (including the research literature) and the methodological approach are well-developed. The results are presented in a more descriptive than analytical way.

Nevertheless, I recommend minor improvements concerning the research question and the discussion. The paper should present the research question (line 64: “This study aims to investigate how mentoring and networking influence women leaders in forestry universities.”) more explicitly. Furthermore, the authors do not explain rigorously enough what they understand of “influence”, and they should link this notion more to the theoretical background.

The vagueness of the research question leads to an imprecise discussion part. Instead of thoroughly analysing the results and answering the research question in the part “discussion”, the authors refer twice to examples of individual respondents and end this part with an example. Thus, the paper's results are less innovative than one could expect. I recommend elaborating more clearly on the research question and focusing the discussion on this question.

Some minor remarks:

The “circular dilemma” (line 60) needs more explanation. The following sentence (“Efforts to increase …”) draws political implications of the dilemma but does not explain it (women are less available as mentors because of their under-representation).

The paper mentions structured mentoring programs (line 101). The reader would like to know if the respondents have some experience with structured mentoring and if there are different effects from informal, formal,

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors responded to most of my concerns. The case is now better motivated, and the article is given a wider perspective. In the section, where it is stated that results can apply to other sectors too, it should be mentioned that this is because certain gender related mechanisms go beyond any sectors and reflect societal issues. These issues might be particularly visible in the forest sector. Also, I suggest that the authors mention the difference between current and past experiences resulting from different career stages as a limitation of their interviews, this can be stated in their limitation section. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf