Having a mentor or sponsor can be of vital importance to a graduate student or junior professor:
The sponsor may serve many functions for the protégé. First, the sponsor introduces and initiates the protégé in the customs, demands, and expectations of academic life. Second, the sponsor shares his or her wisdom and knowledge with the protégé, and provides encouragement and comments on his or her work. Third, the sponsor can provide career assistance for the protégé by making recommendations to his or her colleagues at other institutions, or simply by sharing a bit of the deflected glow from his or her own shining reputation. Perhaps most important, the sponsor helps to form with the protégé the sense of him or herself as a member of the profession, encouraging and fostering a self-image as a legitimate member of the community of scholars [Simeone 1987, page 101,].Despite the importance of having a mentor, there are few formal policies to ensure that every graduate student or junior faculty member receives mentoring. Although every graduate student, for example, has a thesis supervisor, the supervisor typically devotes different amounts of energy to different students. It is reported that ``women are more likely than men to be excluded from this sort of relationship with senior faculty'' [Simeone 1987, page 102,] [Hall 1982, page 10,]. There are several possible reasons for this exclusion. First, as discussed above, some men feel uncomfortable dealing with women as professionals. Second, some ``faculty men may see women as being different from themselves, less intellectually able, less committed and dedicated, or simply inappropriate for academic careers'' [Simeone 1987, page 103,]. Third, when men and women work closely together, there is the risk of their being suspected of having an affair [Simeone 1987, pages 82--83,]. Additionally, many people like to help people who are ``like'' them, i.e. of the same sex or race. (Indeed, that was a motivation for my writing this report.) As long as most of the people in positions of power are men, and as long as differences in sex are considered to be of great importance, junior men will benefit.