Women and Public Organization: An Examination of Mentorship and Its Effect on Reporting Workplace Discrimination

Abstract

A number of studies have focused on mentorship as a variable often associated with career advancement; however, there is little to no research on the impact mentors have with women reporting workplace discrimination, specifically sex-based discrimination to include sexual harassment. Using a survey dataset of 1,113 female officers from a large federal law enforcement agency, this research employs coarsened exact matching to examine mentorship and to include mentor’s gender and its effect on women’s reporting behaviors. This study finds that the probability of reporting sexual harassment increases when women have mentors; however, the existence of mentors did not lead to a significant difference in reporting sex discrimination. In addition, there is no significance on the mentor’s gender with women’s reporting behaviors.