	As suggested above, mentoring has long been considered an important tool to help minority groups succeed, and considerable research has focused on the effects of gender in mentoring. Numerous theories and empirical findings have addressed how male and female mentors differ, how the experience and outcomes of mentoring differ for male and female protégés, and the interactive effects of mentor and protégé gender. Gender differences in mentoring are generally explained using role theory, which suggests that women are socialized and rewarded for being communal, nurturing, and emotionally supportive (and will thus provide more psychosocial support), while men are encouraged to be agentic and instrumentally supportive (and will thus provide more career support). Meta-analytic results generally support this pattern; men provide slightly more career support, while women provide slight more psychosocial support. Similar arguments have been provided regarding gender differences in the type of mentoring received. Some evidence has shown that women report receiving higher levels of psychosocial support, but non-significant differences were found in the receipt of career support.
	These main effects are qualified, however, by interactions between protégé and mentor sex. That is, as above, there are important distinctions between homogenous male and female dyads and male-female pairs. As suggested above, same-sex pairs may experience greater relationship quality, similarity, and role modeling. However, women may benefit from male mentors, who generally have greater access to organizational resources and can facilitate career advancement for their male and female protégés. However, cross-sex pairs can face unique challenges in light of concerns regarding sexual harassment and appropriateness. Gender dissimilarity negatively relates to the amount of time a mentoring pair spends casually socializing. Evidence is mixed with regards to the most optimal gender combination. For example, Ragins and Cotton found that male protégés in homogenous dyads earned more than any other protégés. However, Sosik and Godshalk and Tharenou found that the benefits of a male mentor were greater for women than for men in terms of career development ratings and advancement. These differences in outcomes may be attributed to contextual moderators.
	One important moderator that may explain discrepant findings is occupational or organizational context. For example, women with senior ranking male mentors had higher compensation, career-progress satisfaction, and higher status than males with senior mentors. These relationships were moderated by industry, such that having a senior male mentor was especially beneficial for women in male-dominant industries. Dougherty and colleagues similarly found that women with male mentors benefitted more in terms of earnings than did men in male-dominant occupations (though this was not found for career satisfaction in this study). Signaling theory may explain why the returns for women appear to be greatest in male-dominated settings, as organizational decision-makers must make decisions about pay and promotion based on limited information, and rely on signals about individuals’ abilities. Signals vary in strength and visibility. Having a highly-ranked male mentor with authority, perceived expertise, and control over people and resources is a strong signal, and this signal may be more visible for a female protégé in a male-dominated context. That is, in a male-dominant setting or occupation, women’s minority status may enhance perceived differences between men and women, as well as reinforce stereotypes that male attributes are required for success. In these settings, women typically will face more barriers, as they are structured to perpetuate male advantage. As such, having a male mentor may be especially important in order to break through such barriers, and will result in greater differences for women’s outcomes in comparison to more gender-balanced settings. These findings suggest that dyadic gender composition shouldn’t be considered outside of the context. An interesting area of future research would be to consider how male protégé/female mentor dyads would fare in female-dominated fields, such as nursing, especially in light of the growing pink-collar labor force.
