Finding female role models and mentors can also be helpful to a woman's self-image. While male mentors are certainly useful, and many women are happy with male advisors, female role models serve the additional purpose of providing a living example of a successful female scientist. One study found that ``[f]emale graduate students who identified female professors as role models viewed themselves as more career oriented, confident, and instrumental than did female students identifying male role models'' [Gilbert et al 1983, page 597,], although, as the report notes, self-selection may also have been a factor [Gilbert et al 1983, page 605,]. As noted in [Leveson 1989, page 20,]:
The importance of mentoring and role models cannot be stressed too much. One female student ... wrote about her experience in a summer job working for a female manager who she described as: `one of the most respected people in the company. I had never expected that having a female role model would change the way I felt about myself, but it did'.Thus, a female student should consider finding a senior woman in her field to work for at school or during a summer job. While a person's sex should not be the primary factor in choosing a mentor, spending some time with a female role model can be psychologically beneficial. (See also [Simeone 1987, pages 104--109,].)