Scientists generally agree that finding mentors for young people attracts them to, and keeps them in, science. This is particularly true for women and minorities. But with few women and minorities at faculty level, where should the mentors come from? This question spurred the development of a mentoring programme at Caltech in 2003 called Women Mentoring Women (WMW).

A cooperative effort of several groups on campus, led by the women's centre, the WMW programme pairs graduate students with female postdocs. It also offers group mentoring in the form of book discussions about women in science and professional-development presentations given by faculty members.

This spring, 22 graduate women and postdocs participated in the pilot WMW. The evaluations showed that postdoc mentors gained as much as the graduate students, reinforcing the belief that mentoring benefits both sides.

In the current academic year, WMW's numbers have risen to 62, and it is expected to expand even further in 2004–05. Its participants hope it will serve as a model that will spread to other institutions suffering a dearth of female faculty members, providing mentors for young women scientists at a crucial point in their careers.