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Abstract

This chapter discusses the importance of role models, mentors, and peers in supporting female students’ decision to pursue a PhD. Role models inspire individuals to emulate successful behaviours and set a standard for excellence, while mentors provide guidance, share experiences, and challenge their mentees to reach their full potential. By examining successful mentoring programs and highlighting critical characteristics of adequate role models, we demonstrate their profound impact on career development. Peer relationships may serve some of the critical functions of mentoring while mitigating the challenges of communication, mutual support, and collaboration that sometimes occur in a mentoring relationship. This chapter provides readers with valuable insights on leveraging role models, mentoring, and peers to achieve professional growth and how to become a good role model, mentor, or peer.

Recommended citation: Özge Büyükdağlı, Miguel Goulão, Milena Vujošević Janičić & Amal Mersni, "Voices of Female Informatics Students Across Universities", In: Penzenstadler, B., Boudaoud, K., Di Marco, A., Caner-Yıldırım, S. (eds) Actions for Gender Balance in Informatics Across Europe. Springer, Cham., pp. 105-135, August, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78432-3_6