Julia Gitis is on assignment at the Department of Defense.

“Women make crappy mentors.” Will our generation prove otherwise?

“Women make crappy mentors.” These four deflating words were said to me by Rose*, a senior policy advisor at the Pentagon. For two and a half months, I had tried repeatedly to schedule a meeting with her, until finally her assistant squeezed me into her schedule. When we met for half an hour in Rose’s mahogany office, the conversation took an odd turn.

Our meeting was going well as we discussed the projects we were working on. Then I mentioned that another senior officer had recommended I meet with her. I mentioned his name just to see if she would react positively to ...