The Wednesday Weigh-in: Mentoring Edition

According to a new study by LinkedIn, one in five professional women in the U.S. has never had a mentor.

The survey of nearly 1,000 women found that 52% of women without mentors said they’d just never found “someone appropriate” and 67% of women who had never been mentors said it was because they’d never been asked. Yet 82% of women agreed that mentorship is important.

The good news is that with more working women than ever before, finding women mentors seems to be getting easier. Over half of Gen Y women had been mentored by another woman, compared to 43% of Gen X women and only 34% of Boomers.

I’ve never had a shortage of truly incredible mentors–both men and women–in school, on the soccer field, in my career, and on the interwebs. But then again, I’ve also been operating in pretty women-dominated arenas for awhile, so I probably have a skewed sense.

So what about you? Have you had a hard time finding mentors? If so, how come? Is it because you are too picky, lazy, or full of yourself? What are the barriers to effective mentoring between women in your experience?