“When it comes to marginalized sexual and gender identities, the research literature remains largely in the closet.”
This past Tuesday, Dr. Matthew Voigt, assistant professor of science education at Clemson University, hosted a workshop to discuss issues concerning academic barriers for queer students in STEM. From issues involving “coming out” to widespread accounts of marginalization as well as erasure in classroom curriculum, the workshop focused on strategies to help queer students feel resilient in STEM.
The hour-long workshop was based on Voigt’s October 2020 research published in the Journal of Mathematics Education Research, titled “Finding community and overcoming barriers: experiences of queer and transgender postsecondary students in mathematics and other STEM fields.” Voigt is a researcher who focuses on issues of equity, access, and power structures occurring in undergraduate STEM programs with a focus on introductory mathematics courses.
Voigt’s research findings were no surprise: STEM industries are considered masculine, and gender and sexuality-based discrimination exist at high rates. “In STEM fields, especially engineering, the technical nature of the field is privileged at the expense of the social and communicative aspects of the discipline, which serves to promote heteronormative masculinity,” Voigt said in the paper.
An important finding from the research, according to Voigt, was that queer students felt their personal identity was somehow removed and erased from STEM. Most participants in the study, Voigt found, “recognized a paradoxical notion that STEM as a practice is objective, yet this objectivity has been coupled with structural or institutional factors that have normalized the White straight cisgender male at the center of STEM discourses.”
One participant in the study, Jenny, said she experienced STEM classrooms as “often isolated, operating within a vacuum to the external world,” Voigt found. “For Jenny, viewing STEM as neutral from identity does not allow her the space to process her queer identity within the classroom, which contributed to her perception that queer identity in STEM is best characterized as silent.”
Several women in the study reported that STEM classrooms were particularly harsh toward women. One participant, Amy, said, “When it came to mathematics, that tended to be what was the most sexist. […] As soon as you show an equation, then they don’t believe you.” Another participant, Violet, described mathematics as “wildly pretentious and up its own ass.”
To improve experiences for queer students in STEM, Voigt recommended several strategies for academic leaders to foster empowering spaces. First, universities need to provide professional resources to queer students outside the classroom — for example, by offering campus programming; providing inclusivity training and policies for staff; and supporting professional student organizations, like Out in STEM, which offers networking and mentorship opportunities for queer STEM students.
Next, academic leaders have to “address the climate and support within academic STEM spaces to prevent exclusionary experiences,” Voigt said. Academic STEM spaces need to be reimagined specifically with gender and sexual identities in mind, Voigt said. Recent research, Voigt notes, shows that professors can improve academic spaces by acknowledging pronouns, addressing discriminatory language in the classroom, implementing queer-inclusive curriculum, and providing queer role models.
The workshop hosted by Voigt was held as part of Diversity Education’s “Duck Dialogue,” a monthly event series on social justice in STEM, according to Lilana Delman, assistant director of diversity education, who coordinated the event. Because this “Duck Dialogue” event happened during LGBTQ History Month, Delman said, this workshop focused on issues related to queer identity. Around 24 people attended virtually and in person, according to an email sent after the event thanking attendees who registered.
To watch the workshop, Diversity Education has a recording stored on Kaltura.
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