Policy report: “Inclusion and Advancement of LGBTQ+ People in STEM Fields”

Last May I was invited to Washington, DC, for a symposium and workshop hosted by Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. Presenters in the symposium and participants in the workshop worked together to sum up the state of knowledge about lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and otherwise queer folks’ experiences in scientific and technical careers, especially barriers to LGBTQ participation in STEM — and to identify both needs for new data collection and possible policy choices to lower those barriers.

I’ve contributed a bit to these questions through my work on the Queer in STEM studies with Allison Mattheis, Daniel Cruz-Ramírez De Arellano, and Joey Nelson, and it was a real privilege to spend a few days hearing from a long list of researchers who’ve spent far more time and effort on them. The organizers from ISGMH provided terrific, thoughtful support for the conversations held during the think tank, wrangled us to convert all of that discussion into writing, and edited all of our contributions into a written report that they’ve released today.

That report is a truly comprehensive look at what we know about LGBTQ+ participation (or lack thereof) in STEM, what we can already start to do to foster that participation, and what questions we still need to answer. It’s important work, both for simple justice — STEM careers should be accessible to everyone who can contribute to STEM — and because broad participation in STEM is key to advancing knowledge and improving national competitiveness. As the report’s Executive Summary says,

Countering the effects of discrimination is important on its own. The additional benefit
of addressing LGBTQ+-specific discrimination in STEM and research, as the evidence
below indicates, is that a more diverse STEM workforce will lead to greater advancement of
science, technology, and health, and potentially better outcomes for society as a whole. These
outcomes will be beneficial for the US broadly, as the nation is falling behind in STEM fields
compared to other leading countries, according to Athanasia and Cota (2024).

The symposium last year was well timed to push a new Biden Administration initiative to broaden inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity as metrics of diversity in data collection across federal agencies — including the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates, which finally announced last month that it will ask participants to provide their sexual orientation as well as gender identity starting this year, after years of advocacy led by Jon Freeman at Columbia University. That means NSF will now directly collect data to track participation of LGBTQ+ folks in doctoral programs and the scientific workforce nationwide.

There’s still lots of work to do, but I’m excited to see results from this advocacy already. I highly recommend reading the whole report — I’m very proud to have been able to contribute to it, and I think it’ll be an important resource going forward.