ABSTRACT
For many women struggling to survive sexism in academia, the struggle is a lone one, as they (sometimes blindly) navigate the institutional particularities that dictate the success. Women in Technical Communication is a nationally recognized organization that offers support for women in the field of technical communication, broadly construed. Though many institutions boast mentoring programs—and some even with a focus on mentoring women—few mentoring programs overtly respond to sexism through infrastructural approaches as Women in Technical Communication (WomeninTC) aims to do. The chapter offers a history of WomeninTC and overviews mentoring as it has traditionally been theorized and implemented. It then illustrates how WomeninTC's innovative model differs from existing models and, specifically, the ways that it addresses institutional structures that perpetuate sexism. Since the initial luncheon, WomeninTC has focused on building an approach to mentoring that might help women faculty in the field of technical communication be successful.
