Queer individuals’ experiences in STEM learning and working environments

ABSTRACT

Research has shown how several groups of people such as women and certain racial groups have been consistently underrepresented and discriminated in STEM. However, little is known about the LGBTQIA+ community (queer from now on) in STEM. Hence, our aim in this study was to synthesise the existing knowledge base of the experiences of queer individuals in STEM learning and working environments through a systematic literature review. Twenty-four empirical studies were identified using different searching methods and analysed using deductive and inductive approaches. The review was guided by the following questions: (a) how do queer individuals perceive the culture of STEM learning and working environments? (b) what is the nature of the experiences of queer individuals in STEM? and (c) what coping mechanism do queer individuals in STEM enact? The findings showcase an unwelcoming, hostile STEM culture, embedded in social norms that reinforced cisheteronormativity. Queer individuals experienced different types of exclusionary behaviours such as harassment, social, and professional exclusion. This study contributes to the research field of equity in STEM by offering insights on how queer individuals are subjected to oppression and marginalisation in STEM fields and provides a set of recommendations for theory, research, and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer
• LGBTQIA+
• gender and sexual diversity
• STEM
• experiences

1. Introduction

A large and growing body of literature has provided evidence of how specific social groups and communities experience institutional and systemic oppression and marginalisation, which results in low participation rates in STEM relative to their representation in the country population (Dancy et al., 2020; Nguyen & Riegle-Crumb, 2021; Woolston, 2020). Women, people from certain racial and ethnic groups, and persons with disabilities are consistently underrepresented in STEM (European Commission, 2022; National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, National Science Foundation, 2021; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2022). In the US, for example, the representation of women, persons with disabilities, Blacks, African Americans, Latinx or Native Americans in science and engineering education and employment is smaller than their representation in the US population (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, National Science Foundation, 2021). In Europe, data from the She Figure (2021) show that women Doctoral graduates, although over-represented in Education (more than 60%), continue to be under-represented in the narrow STEM fields of physical sciences (38.4%), mathematics and statistics (32.5%), ICT (20.8%), engineering and engineering trades (27%), and architecture and construction (37.2%) (European Commission, 2022).

While the discussion of equity and diversity in the European context centres around gender, a question that warrants further examination is how gender has been conceptualised in this body of research. According to the European Commission’s policy initiatives to UNESCO and SDG5 of UNDESA, gender equality is about empowering women and girls (European Commission, 2022; GLSEN, 2020; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2022; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2022). A number of studies in science education have treated gender inequality as women’s issues, as though gender and sex are interchangeable terms and as though the category of women accounts for all the subjects harmed by the systems that perpetuate gender inequality (Brotman & Moore, 2008; de B Vidor et al., 2020; Traxler et al., 2016). Reports on the representation of minorities in STEM lack a demographic overview of the gender and sexual minorities in STEM education and workforce, i.e. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and other gender and sexual minorities (LGBTQIA+, queer from now on).

Addressing the gender and diversity gap is important in terms of equality, access to knowledge, production of scientifically literate citizens, and balance in decision-making (Bianchini, 2017; European Commission, 2022; Gilbert, 2001; Sarseke, 2018). Moreover, inclusion of diverse perspectives in the STEM workforce will improve the quality of scientific work and will contribute to addressing current global challenges (Clark Blickenstaff, 2005; Hughes, 2018; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2022). However, genderism and heterosexism operate in ways that erase queer and trans identities, resulting to a continued epistemic harm against them, rendering them unintelligible and invisible in research related to diversity and gender equity (Kean, 2020).

The STEM education research community has done a lot of work in attempting to address the gender gap in ways that go beyond obsolete conceptualisations of gender as fixed and binary to adopt a performative understanding, being up to date with fields of gender and queer studies (Avraamidou, 2019; Danielsson, 2012, Gonsalves & Danielsson, 2020; Gonsalves et al., 2016). However, only a few studies report empirical data of queer individuals studying or working in STEM. These studies showcased experiences of exclusion and harassment. Data from the ‘LGBT Climate in Physics’ report showed that a significant proportion of queer physicists in the US had either experienced or observed harassment or other exclusionary behaviour (Atherton et al., 2016). This is also the case for physical scientists in the UK and Ireland (Institute of Physics, Royal Astronomical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019). The same report revealed that a percentage of 28 of queer physical scientists in the UK had at some point considered leaving their workplace because of the climate or discrimination towards queer individuals. Moreover, analysis of a data set from the Higher Education Research Institute showed that queer students in the US were 8% less likely to be retained in STEM compared to switching into a non-STEM programme (Hughes, 2018).

Through this study we aim to contribute to the research area of equity in STEM by providing a synthesis of research on queer individuals’ experience in STEM in the past years (2000–2021). Understanding the unique experiences of this group will shed light on the systemic inequalities they face, amplify their voice and representation, which is connected to goals related to equity and social justice. In addition, such an understanding will provide useful insights that can be used as input for the design of gender-inclusive teacher education programmes, professional development training for inservice teachers, as well as gender-inclusive STEM learning and working environments.

By no means, we wish for the STEM educational research community to limit the research around queer in STEM in deficit approaches that present queer individuals only as victims. But shedding light on the experiences of queer individuals in STEM is at the very least a departure point for our goal to bring about social justice for queer individuals in STEM. Hence, the purpose of this study is to present a critical synthesis of the existing knowledge base on the experiences of queer individuals in STEM learning and working environments. The driving questions of the study were the following:

1. How do queer individuals perceive the culture of STEM learning and working environments?

2. What is the nature of queer individuals’ experiences in STEM learning and working environments?

3. What kinds of coping mechanisms do queer individuals adopt as members of STEM learning and working environments?

Throughout the manuscript we use the terms related to gender and sexuality that often have a different meaning for different people. The readers can consult the Glossary provided by the LGBTQIA Resource Center at UC Davis for a better understanding of how we use relevant terms (LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary, 2021). In the next section, we present the methodology used to identify and analyse the studies. In the third section of the study, we present the findings, and following that, a synthesis of the findings under the main three themes structured around the research questions. In the last section of the manuscript, we provide a set of recommendations and implications for theory, research, and practice.

2. Methodology

A systematic literature review was conducted to synthesise the findings of empirical studies that examined the experiences of queer individuals in STEM learning and/or working environments. Using a range of searching techniques is required to thoroughly identifying literature in social science systematic reviews since conventional subject searching might lead to missing out significant studies (Papaioannou et al., 2010). We used three different searching methods to identify relevant studies: (a) pearl-growing method i.e. searching in databases with the use of keywords; (b) backward snowball method i.e. using a key study as a starting point; and (c) forward snowball method or citation searching i.e. identifying studies by searching who has cited a key document. More specifically, pearl growing involves taking a relevant study as a starting point and using its keywords and quality filters to find other relevant studies in the same database (Papaioannou et al., 2010; Schlosser et al., 2006). Backward snowball method requires making use of the reference list of a selected study to identify relevant studies (Wohlin, 2014). Given that backward snowballing can only lead to tracking studies that were published prior to the selected study, it is often accompanied by forward snowballing. Forward snowball method or citation searching involves a systematic way of searching the citations of a selected study (Jalali & Wohlin, 2012). Following up pearl-growing methods with other techniques, as for example, reference list checking and citation searching has been proven essential to yielding high-quality studies for inclusion in systematic reviews in social sciences (Papaioannou et al., 2010). For conducting the systematic literature review, we followed the steps of the PRISMA 2009 checklist.

2.1. Inclusion criteria

Our purpose with this systematic literature review was to synthesise empirical knowledge about the lived experiences of queer individuals in STEM. Thus, we decided to search for studies that included empirical evidence and presented qualitative or quantitative data collected through empirical research with queer individuals. We included studies in various STEM disciplines: physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Exceptions are the studies of Forbes (2020), English and Fenby-Hulse (2019), and Patridge et al. (2014) who examined participants’ experiences in other fields because they provided valuable insight about the experiences of queer individuals in STEM. The added value of these studies lies in the fact that they might inform our understanding of why STEM fields have been characterised by some researchers as hostile in contrast to the social sciences.

We decided to provide an overview of the existing knowledge base over a 21-year period (2000–2021) because an initial search showed minimal research on the topic before 2000. Thus, we believed that reviewing studies published within the last two decades were both necessary and feasible. We selected to review literature in the English language given that it is a widely used language in academia and many researchers can write and read in English. A limitation of this decision is that we are missing research published in other languages and as a result, the findings of this review are probably Eurocentric. Moreover, we chose to limit our review to peer-reviewed published studies. That resulted in the exclusion of relevant academic work that might have been published in the form of book chapters or grey literature such as conference proceedings, reports, theses, etc.

Summing up, the studies were selected based on the following inclusion criteria: (a) studies should be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals; (b) studies should be published between 2000 and 2021; (c) studies should be written in English; (d) studies should present empirical research; and (e) studies should include queer individuals as participants and should be situated in STEM.

2.2. Literature identification

The following article databases for Pedagogy and Educational Sciences were selected: Scopus, SmartCat, SocINDEX, and ERIC. Scopus (https://www.scopus.com/home.uri) is the largest abstract and citation database used by researchers to track, analyse, and visualise peer-reviewed research. SocINDEX (https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/socindex) and ERIC (https://eric.ed.gov/) are commonly used bibliographical databases in the field of sociology and education, respectively. The use of multiple databases increased the chances of identifying related literature and not missing out any relevant studies. The searches were conducted between January and March of 2021; therefore, studies that were published within 2021 but were not indexed in these databases at the time we performed the searches might not be in the final sample.

Our starting paper for the pearl growing procedure was Kersey and Voigt (2020) which displayed the following keywords: Queer, Transgender, LBTQIA, STEM, Mathematics. We decided, however, to use more terms to yield material relevant to ‘queer’ and ‘STEM’, and to add a third theme that would represent education. In the end, three key terms along with alternative acronyms, synonyms or related terms were used for the searches: (a) queer, LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIA+, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, MISoG, sexual minority, sexual minorities, etc.; (b) STEM, science, engineering, etc.; (c) education, learning. Furthermore, we narrowed the results by using Boolean operators such as ‘AND’ and ‘OR’. We conducted several searches with different combinations of keywords in each database. Before moving to the next database, we removed doubles and non-accessible studies, we then exported and scanned the titles of the remaining studies and updated the keywords to further narrow down the results. For example, after the first searches in Scopus, we retrieved many results related to medical science and healthcare that were deemed as irrelevant. Therefore, we updated the next searches by adding ‘NOT medical science’.

Finally, we used filters such as language, document, source type, and year to limit the search in studies written in English and published in journals between the years 2000 and 2021. An example of a full string in Scopus is as follows: TITLE-ABS-KEY ((lgbt* OR queer) AND (stem OR science OR engineering) AND (university OR workplace)) AND (LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR, 2021) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, ‘English’).

2.3. Eligibility and quality assessment

The searches resulted in a total of 413 studies: 230 from Scopus, 90 from Smartcat, 51 from SocINDEX, and 42 from ERIC. Relevant details of the 413 studies were gathered in a GRID Excel document. The GRID document had a separate TAB for every database. In each TAB, we wrote down the number of studies that were obtained, repeated, out of scope, and the number of the final sample for each combination of keywords. In addition, there was a TAB that presented all the retrieved studies that resulted from the searches, categorised by database and keywords. This TAB presented the following details for every study: database and keywords used to identify this study, authors, date, title, journal, times that was repeated, whether it was included or not, and a comment that justified the inclusion/exclusion. We started the assessment by excluding 107 doubles. Afterwards, we screened through the titles and abstracts of the remaining studies to assess their relevance to the research topic. Two hundred eighty-seven studies were excluded either for not being empirical or because they were considered out of scope. After the full-text assessment of 19 studies, seven were deemed as not eligible. Two of them were about K-12 and five of them were not about STEM and did not provide any comparison to STEM fields or any other information that would enrich our understanding of the topic. The 12 remaining studies were considered eligible.

Two of the included studies published within the last 2 years were used as a starting point for the snowball method (Cech & Waidzunas, 2021; Miller et al., 2021) during July of 2021. First, we screened through the references of Miller et al. (2021) because their literature review section cited a lot of relevant studies. We also decided to use Cech and Waidzunas (2021) study as a key document for backward snowballing by using the citations of articles to identify studies. We had already included two studies published by them and a third one came up in the references of Miller et al. (2021). We agreed that if they regularly publish in this area, they might cite valuable work or have other publications of their own. Moreover, the two oldest studies were used for citation searching (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011). This procedure provided us with 12 more studies that were deemed as eligible first by their title and then by their abstract. We skimmed through the text of the final sample (12 studies) to further assess their eligibility and quality. Figure 1 presents the flow of information through the two phases of literature identification, as described above.

Figure 1. Flow of information.

2.4. Data extraction and analysis

From each study, we extracted information related to the geographical location, the aim, the methodology, the methods, the context, the participants, the findings, and the conclusions. We constructed one-page-long description about the geographical location, the aim, the methodology, the methods, the context, the participants, the findings, and the conclusions of each study, including also valuable quotes of the participants or insightful comments of the researchers. Following that, we organised the data into categories using a combination of deductive and inductive approaches.

We started by organising the main findings of the included studies under the three categories that were relevant to our study: STEM culture, experiences of queer individuals, and coping mechanisms (deductive approach). For instance, findings such as exclusion form social gatherings, crude comments, and negative emotions were placed under the category ‘experiences’. During this process, we decided to further narrow down the experiences of queer individuals into two distinct categories: a) interpersonal- or relational-level experiences (coming from interaction with others) and b) individual-level experiences (emotions, thoughts, well-being, etc.). This choice was inspired by the study of Bilimoria and Stewart (2009) who distinguished the internally experienced consequences from the career consequences of the work climate for lesbian and gay faculty in science and engineering. In this way, we organised all the data, i.e. the information extracted by the studies, in four categories (culture, interpersonal-level experiences, individual-level experiences, coping mechanisms) using a deductive approach.

Following on that, we went through the findings section of the included studies again, and selected quotes and valuable descriptions of the authors that were relevant to each one of the categories, even if the study did not intend to address this specific category. For example, if the study did not examine the culture of a context (e.g. workplace culture) but the quotes of the participants were giving information about this, we would select these excerpts and place them under the category ‘culture’. Finally, we concluded by using inductive approach to merge the data into bigger categories within the main categories. For example, under the category of ‘interpersonal experiences’ we had placed findings of the included studies such as homophobic jokes, derogatory jokes, transphobic comments, etc. We merged some of these findings into a bigger category of ‘verbal abuse’, which in turned was merged together with other findings like stalking, inappropriate touching or attempt to touch, into a bigger category of ‘harassment’, which falls under the main category of ‘interpersonal level experiences’. Table 1 shows an example of the codebook used, which included the name of the category, a description, and an example coming from the reported findings of a study (as noted in the information extracted), or as comment of the authors, or as a quote of the participants.

Table 1. Sample of the codebook.

Code		Description	Example
Theme	Subtheme
STEM culture (deductive)	Hypermasculine Sexist Cishetero Hostile Silent for queer identities	The term reflects a collection of historical trends, normalised beliefs, values, attitudes, assumptions, and cultural and societal expectations regarding STEM majors and professionals’ gender and sexual identities. We refer to (a) the culture of a specific context described by the participants, e.g. culture in campus, courses, extra curriculum activities, the workplace culture, etc. and (b) their perception of the overall S.T.E.M./STEM culture, which might reflect historically hegemonic ideas about who you need to be in order to be considered a valid/real/good scientist/engineer/technician, etc.	Findings of the study: The participants ‘experienced and navigated a pervasive culture of centering cisgender heterosexual men within STEM learning environments – referred to by students as dude or bro culture’ (Miller et al., 2021, p. 1).
	Example: Sexist culture (inductive)	A culture that promotes sexism. By sexism, we refer to ‘the cultural, institutional, and individual set of beliefs and practices that privilege men, subordinate women, and devalue ways of being that are associated with women’. (https://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/educated/glossary).	Findings of the study: heterosexual men bragging about how many women they have slept with or referring to peers as ‘hot’ women with whom they wanted to have sex (Miller et al., 2021).
Interpersonal-level experiences (deductive)	Discrimination Harassment Social Exclusion Professional devaluation Career consequences	Incidents where queer individuals were targets of negative behaviour vis-à-vis their sexual and gender identities, and gender expression.	Findings of the study: ‘Findings indicate that the majority of respondents experienced exclusionary behavior based on their gender expression or being a woman’ (Barthelemy, 2020).
	Example: Professional exclusion (inductive)	Not being included in collaborations, professional devaluation, less access to resources and opportunities for professional development, etc. because of their sexual and gender identities, and gender expression.	Quote of participants: “For example, one person’s mentor had said of another person ‘I think she’s a lesbian; I’d never trust her data’ (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009, p. 90).
Individual-level experiences (deductive)	Negative emotions Additional burden Health and wellness problems	Experiences of queer individuals in STEM related to their gender/sexual identity, and gender expression, focusing on the individual’s feelings, thoughts, and wellbeing.	Findings of the study: Queer STEM students in the study felt ‘invisible’ or subtly ‘ignored’ (Miller et al., 2021).
	Example: Health & Wellness Problems (inductive)	Feeling nervous, anxious, depressed, having problems with sleeping, health problems, etc.	Findings of the study: Queer status found to be related to negative health and wellness outcomes of STEM students, i.e. feeling exhausted, nervous, stressed, unhappy or depressed (Cech & Rothwell, 2018).
Coping mechanisms (deductive)	Hiding Covering Working harder Separating personal from professional life	Mechanisms that queer individuals in STEM enacted in order to navigate through the culture of STEM environments.	Findings of the study: Coping techniques used by queer engineering students to navigate the climate: passing, covering, the achievement of expertise, living compartmentalised lives (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011).

We ended up with the following categories: (a) STEM culture (deductive), which further divided in (i) cisheteronormative, hypermasculine, sexist (inductive), (ii) hostile (inductive), (iii) invisibility and culture of silence (inductive); (b) Interpersonal-level experiences (deductive), which was further divided in (i) harassment (inductive), (ii) social exclusion (inductive), (iii) professional exclusion (inductive); (c) Individual-level experiences (deductive), which was divided in (i) negative emotions (inductive), (ii) additional burden (inductive), (iii) health and wellness problems (inductive) and finally; (d) Coping mechanisms (deductive), which was divided in (i) hiding their identity (inductive), (ii) covering characteristics associated with queerness (inductive), (iii) working harder than their non-queer peers (inductive), (iv) separating personal from professional life (inductive).

3. Findings

The 24 studies included are presented in Table 2 (see Appendix). For each one of these studies, the table indicates (a) the methods used to collect data, i.e. interview, focus group, or survey, by placing an ‘X’ in the respective cell; (b) the number and type of participants, i.e. students or professionals, by writing the number of the participants in the respective cell; and (c) relevant results, categorised with respect to the three research questions. Following this table, we present a set of descriptive statistics of the included studies and provide general information about the methods, the fields, the status of the participants, the geographical location of the studies, and the terminology used by the researchers to describe sexual and gender identities.

3.1. Descriptive statistics

Of the 24 studies, half employed qualitative methods, which included interviews, focus groups, or both. Eleven studies employed quantitative methods, i.e. surveys, and two studies used mixed methods, i.e. survey and interviews. The participants were either students or professionals. Sixteen studies examined undergraduate or graduate students, seven examined professionals, and one examined both populations. Twelve studies examined queer in STEM, three in engineering, one in science and engineering, two in biology, one in physics, one in technology, and one in computing. Furthermore, as stated earlier, we chose to include three studies that did not specifically examine STEM fields. Two of these reported results from participants studying in STEM and non-STEM fields. These studies were included because they reported separate results for STEM fields or because the participants’ quotes answered one or more of our research questions. Finally, there was one study in which the researchers interviewed queer students majoring in social sciences, humanities, and other non-STEM fields. This study was deemed as eligible because the participants had ‘constructed’ STEM fields in their college as queer-free and social sciences as warmer.

By geographical location of the study, we refer to the country where the data were collected. Of 24 studies, 22 collected data in the US, 1 was carried out in the UK, and 1 in Brazil. Finally, two studies do not refer to the location, but the affiliation of the authors and the introduction parts of the paper point out to the US. The participants of the studies were residents of these countries, but many of them were coming from different places of the world and held multiple racial and ethnic identities. Furthermore, the participants had different gender and sexual identities and used different terminology to describe themselves. The researchers used different terminology as un umbrella term for the participants’ sexual and gender identities. All the studies mentioned one of the following abbreviations: LGBTQIA, LGBTQA, LGBTQ+, or LGBQ. Two researchers used the word ‘queer’ and two the acronyms MIoSG (Minoritized Identities of Sexuality and/or Gender) along with one of the previous mentioned acronyms.

4. Synthesis of the findings

In what follows, we synthesise the findings of the studies reviewed under three subsections, which represent the main three themes developed from our analysis: (a) the nature of STEM culture in learning/working environments; (b) the experiences of queer individuals in STEM; and (c) the coping mechanisms that queer individuals enacted as members of STEM learning/working environments. Figure 2 illustrates our synthesis of the findings. STEM culture was deemed by participants of the studies as (a) hypermasculine, sexist, and cisheteronormative; (b) hostile; and (c) silent for queer identities.

Figure 2. Synthesis of the findings of the systematic literature review.

The second theme refers to the participants’ experiences within STEM. Some of the experiences reported were describing incidents where queer individuals were targets of negative behaviour vis-à-vis their sexual and gender identities, and some were focusing on the individual’s feelings, thoughts, and wellbeing. Hence, this theme is further subdivided into the following: (i) interpersonal-level experiences, such as discrimination and harassment; and (ii) individual-level experiences, such as negative emotions.

The third theme refers to coping mechanisms enacted by the participants of the reviewed studies to navigate STEM, namely: (a) hiding their identity; (b) covering characteristics associated with queerness; (c) working harder than their non-queer peers; and (d) separating personal from professional life.

It is important to note that the reviewed studies present findings that could be associated with more than one theme or more than one subtheme. For example, a study might report negative career consequences for queer in STEM (second theme) and also hiding as a coping mechanism (third theme). Hence, the relevant findings of this study are reported in both subthemes. However, in order to avoid providing repeating information related to the study, we provide this information only the first time that the study’s findings are reported. Nevertheless, the readers can always consult the main table of the results for more information (see Appendix).

4.1. RQ1: how do queer individuals perceive STEM culture?

We use the term STEM culture to describe certain traits of STEM higher institutions and companies as well as of the overall STEM or STEM community reported by the reviewed studies. We acknowledge that cultures vary within the disciplines, sectors, microclimate of a given social context, geographical location, and other factors. However, by using this term we incorporate what some researchers described as climate, environment, or culture and we refer to (a) the culture of a specific context described by the participants, e.g. culture in campus, courses, extra curriculum activities, the workplace culture, etc.; and (b) their perception of the overall S.T.E.M./STEM community which might reflect historically hegemonic ideas about who you need to be in order to be considered a valid/real/good scientist/engineer/technician, etc. In this study, the term STEM culture is used to refer to the collection of historical trends, normalised beliefs, values, attitudes, cultural and societal expectations regarding STEM majors and professionals’ gender and sexual identities. The importance of examining the elements of this culture is that they often framed the experience of participants and resulted in various negative experiences.

4.1.1. Hypermasculinity, sexism, cisheteronormativity

In 13 out of the twenty-five studies STEM culture was associated with one or more of the following terms: hypermasculinity, cisheteronormativity, heteronormativity, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia (Alfrey & Twine, 2017; Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; Cooper et al., 2016; Costa et al., 2015; English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Kersey & Voigt, 2020; Linley et al., 2018; Mattheis et al., 2019; Miller & Downey, 2020; Miller et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2021). In what follows, we provide information about these studies and the findings related to STEM culture.

Cech and Waidzunas (2011) is one of the earliest and most-cited works on LGB students in engineering among the reviewed studies. Their study was published when almost nothing was known about queer identities within the equity in engineering literature. However, according to the researchers, other researchers pointed out the heteronormativity of this field and LGBT people were indeed studying or working as engineers. Hence, Cech and Waidzunas decided to address this gap by examining the climate of a US engineering college queer individuals experience vis-à-vis their sexual identities. The research was an exploratory qualitative study. The participants were 17 engineering queer undergraduate and graduate students from a major US college, reporting multiple intersecting identities in terms of race, gender, and sexuality. The findings indicated general heteronormativity, anti-queer sexual prejudice, and anti-gay epithets. The heteronormative climate in engineering at this college was often expressed with anti-queer comments and homophobic slurs that were hostile comments aiming at degrading people. Fifteen out of the 17 participants experienced or witnessed at least one incident like that in their engineering community. Cech and Waidzunas noted a ‘strong cultural dichotomy’ between heterosexuality and homosexuality, with the first being praised, whereas the latter degraded. The queer engineering participants pointed out the construction of white heterosexual man as the ‘typical engineer’. Not fitting these criteria was not only unusual, but also a problem. It is therefore not surprising that the participants reported pressure for individuals to conform by following a heterosexual relationship. The findings not only indicated little tolerance for gay but also even less tolerance for not fitting in the gay/straight binary.

Beyond general heteronormativity, engineering-specific biases against queer students were also described. Departments of biological and chemical engineering were ranked by the participants as more tolerant than computer engineering and computer science (average tolerant) and way more tolerant than mechanical, aerospace, civil, and structural departments. The latter were considered as more ‘technical’ and ‘hard’ subfields.

These findings demonstrate how the technical/social dualism legitimated heterosexuality. The technical/social dualism is an ideological separation between technical and social tasks and skills. Within the overall culture of engineering, this false distinction associates engineering identity only with technical skills, whereas social dimensions are considered as not legitimate and therefore irrelevant. Queer issues and experiences, discussions of equity and discrimination were marked as ‘social’ and therefore not relevant and not ‘serious’ enough for engineering. As a result, superiority of heterosexuality was being legitimated. These findings also indicate the mapping of technical/social dualism onto masculinity/femininity binary and the association of masculinity/femininity with lesbian or bi women and gay men, respectively. More specifically, gay feminine men were not even expected to hold a technical position whereas lesbian and bisexual women, perceived as masculine, were expected to outperform straight feminine women. However, due to the overall heteronormativity, even this positive attribution to lesbians and bisexual women was not enough for them to compete with ‘real’ engineers.

In a more recent study, Miller et al. (2021) with 56 participants with queer identities showcased similar findings. ‘Dude’ or ‘bro culture’ were the words used by many participants to describe the culture in STEM which puts cis hetero men in the centre. Subcategories of bro culture that emerged from data included hypermasculinity and assumed heterosexuality, inferiority and invisibility, objectification and sexualisation, microclimate variation in bro culture, and strategies used by students to navigate bro culture. One of the ways bro culture manifested was the expectations of every man being strong, unemotional, and heterosexual (hypermasculinity). Several quotes of this participant captured how hypermasculine bro culture in STEM excluded non-heterosexual orientations and required from men to continuously assert their masculinity. Many of the participants described STEM environments as fields awash with anti-queer discourses (slurs, offensive jokes) that assumed heterosexuality and praised masculinity.

In many instances, minoritised identities of sexuality and/or gender in STEM fields were treated as inferior or invisible. Other manifestations of bro culture in STEM were the objectification and over-sexualisation of women and more specifically of queer women. Participants reported cishetero men ‘bragging’ about how many women they have slept with or referring to co-workers as ‘hot’ women they would like to have sex with. One of the participants ‘talked about not only the objectification of women, but the power-laden belief that “gay” women were objects for the sexual entertainment or for straight men (e.g. watching women have sex, engaging in threesomes). (p. 7)’ Similarly to Cech and Waidzunas’s (2011), this one also revealed some disciplinary differences. This study, however, illustrated more clearly the invisibility and devaluation (mostly of women) as well as the objectification (mostly of queer women), which was subtly shown also in the previous study as for example, congratulating for ‘boning’ the female professor, or ‘people thinking that bisexual people are slutty’ (Cech and Waidzunas, p. 9).

Another study that highlighted gender oppression, sexism, and heteronormativity is that of Kersey and Voigt (2020). The researchers implemented and drew comparisons between two different studies, to examine queer and transgender postsecondary students’ experience in STEM environments. Both studies were theoretically framed within critical-poststructuralism, feminism, and queer theory. The first study, using a narrative inquiry methodology, examined the experience of seven current or former graduate and undergraduate STEM students who self-identified as transgender and/or gender nonconforming. The students were recruited through snowball sampling. Data collection involved 3 semi-structured interviews of up to 90 min. and a journal prompt that was completed by each participant. During the interview, students were asked to position themselves in the Dimensions of Gender Oppression (DGO) chart. The chart is based on Rands (2009, 2012) conceptualisation of gender-based oppression that includes two dimensions: gender category oppression, referring to whether one is presumed as man, woman, or nonbinary and gender transgression oppression, referring to how one fits to the presumed gender. For the second study, four queer undergraduate students in the US, recruited from ‘Out in STEM’ student organisations, participated in semi-structured interview (about 1-h long). Topics discussed include experiences as queer in STEM, nature of STEM, coming out processes, favourite courses, and advice for others. Participants were also asked to complete 2 mathematical tasks. After the data collection and analysis of both studies, cross-cutting themes were identified. Taken together, the results highlight the experiences of queer people in STEM learning environments.

The findings indicated that the participants experienced gender oppression (e.g. women receiving backlash for presenting masculinity). When the participants described the culture of STEM, engineering was characterised as ‘masculine’ and ‘conservative’, mathematics as ‘sexist’ and ‘pretentious’. The participants were able to recognise the paradoxical experience of perceiving STEM as an objective and irrelevant to identity practice, which has nevertheless normalised having only White cisgender men at the centre.

Similar findings were presented in Miller and Downey’s (2020) study which aimed to understand the experiences of queer self-identifying students who were struggling with (mental) health problems. They drew from a sample of 25 queer students with disabilities studying at a university in the southern United States in STEM and non-STEM fields. During the data analysis of this sample, they identified notable differences between STEM and non-STEM academic culture and proceed to further focus on the five STEM majoring participants of the sample. STEM culture was perceived as hypermasculine, male-centred, and heteronormative. One of the participants, an autistic, white, gay, undergraduate student mentioned a scholarship programme in computer science that considered enrolling to before entering the university. Eventually, he decided not to pursue it because he would not fit in with the ‘bro culture’ and the conservative, hypermasculine male students. Interestingly enough, although this student got alienated from this space and chose not to pursue it because of his gender performance, he found a computer science major as being complementary with autism, introversion, and independence. This perception might reveal the participant’s ideas about who you need to be in order to be (a good) computer scientist. One could associate this case with the social/technical dualism mentioned earlier in Cech and Waidzunas (2011) study. The student associated identities that are stereotypically perceived as non-social with a technical major, such as the computer science, as if social and technical skills are mutually exclusive.

Women participants also pointed out the lack of women among both faculty and students. A bisexual, Mexican American female with mental health disabilities (anxiety, depression, eating disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder) doubted that she belonged in the geology major, especially as a feminine-presenting woman. Another participant, a white, queer engineering graduate student with the following self-identified disabilities, ‘ASD, health problems, injuries, mental health’, shared that when an older male professional at the internship site met her, he told her it was not too late to switch to a less difficult major. Meanwhile, she was currently at the top of her class. While this incident happened before she becomes a graduate student, it shaped how she perceived STEM climate as often negative against woman.

In summary, the queer participants of this study perceived the climate in STEM as ‘chilly’ for their gender and sexual identities. Besides pointing out the superiority of masculinity in STEM fields, the contribution of this study is that it implies a difference among the culture of STEM and non-STEM fields. As stated earlier, the researchers initially examined the higher education experiences of 25 queer students with disabilities, and significant differences were spotted between STEM and non-STEM fields that triggered them to further focus on the 5 STEM majors. Hence, this, along with the next two studies will provide us with the opportunity to initiate the following discussion: is this perceived heteronormative and male-centred culture a normalised reality of a typical higher institution that reflects society’s values or are those elements specifically associated with STEM culture(s) (despite any disciplinary differences) and historical hegemonic ideas about who gets to be a STEM/S.TE.M. person?

In a study aiming to examine the kind of support, pedagogy, and culture might best support queer students, English and Fenby-Hulse (2019) analysed 224 survey responses of queer doctoral students in the UK in 2017, of which some were in STEM majors, and investigated how inclusive the environment was for the target population. The questions were a mixture of open questions and fixed-alternative questions, accompanied by secondary free-text ‘further comments’ and explored feelings related to queer identity and impact on their personal and academic life. The survey responders of this study were doctorate students coming from several majors and the researchers did not discuss any disciplinary differences. The findings of the survey indicated a diverse level of inclusivity. Many responses suggested a safe environment, e.g. 74% of the responders stated that their gender/sexual identity did not affect their supervision team; others indicated heteronormative, cisnormative, and binary-gender assumptions embedded in the academic environment. Among the quotes of students praising a welcoming environment, the only field that was specifically mentioned was psychology. At the same time, among the quotes that described a lack of support and inclusion, STEM and physical sciences were the only fields that were specifically mentioned. According to the participants’ quotes, STEM faculty was ‘macho male-dominate’, and the physical sciences were accused of having a heterosexual male culture.

The ways in which STEM culture was perceived through prejudice was examined by Costa et al. (2015) in Brazil with 1119 non-heterosexual participants. The findings showed ‘extreme’ and ‘high’ prejudice in students enrolled in Engineering, Agricultural Sciences, and Exact and Geological Sciences, whereas ‘very low’ or ‘minimal’ prejudice tended to appear in the Humanities and Linguistics and Arts. Another important finding related to the culture of the university is the following: although a percentage of 63.7 of non-heterosexual students had seen or heard of discrimination, only 33.4% of heterosexual were aware of any discrimination. According to the researchers, heterosexism normalises prejudice towards queer individuals and therefore makes invisible any incident of discrimination.

A further step after discussing about possible differences among STEM and non-STEM fields is to acknowledge possible differences among STEM fields that include different disciplines and subdisciplines. Even when we are talking about the overall culture of a field or a community and not the climate of specific institution, the range of heteronormativity or homophobia might vary. For instance, the participants in Cech and Waidzunas (2011) ranked biology engineering as more tolerant to queer than mechanical engineering.

Cooper’s et al. (2016) study reports the experiences of seven queer students majoring in biology, a discipline that is often considered most welcoming for women than physics or other science fields. The biology students, coming from a large public research-intensive institution in the US Southwest, participated in a course that was taught in an active learning way. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed by the two researchers using a combination of content analysis and grounded theory. The first set of interviews explored how the queer status might influence their experience and relationships in classroom and within the biology community. Participants had time to answer this question and keep notes before the beginning of the interview. A comparison between traditional methods of learning and active learning formed the second set of interviews which was conducted 1 month after the end of the course. The findings indicated that despite homophobia not being socially acceptable overall, students experienced subtle forms of homophobia in the biology classroom since many people show their prejudice in other ways. Moreover, even for those who were more tolerant to diverse sexual orientations, there was resistance to accept transgender people. It was still acceptable to be transphobic. The participants did not speak of a masculine and male centred culture in biology as was portrayed in the engineering fields that were discussed earlier. They also did not presume the biology community as being heteronormative. They did, however, say that they experience homophobia and transphobia, and that the biology community is not welcoming to queer. The next study also contributes to a discussion of disciplinary differences and the difference of general academic climate versus STEM climate.

Linley et al. (2018) aimed to understand in what ways queer STEM students experience their collegiate ecological systems. Their study was framed within ecology theory. The process-person-context- time (PPCT) model (Bronfenbrenner, 2005) was applied to examine the ecological systems of queer STEM majoring. According to Bronfenbrenner, one’s system is made up from microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and macrosystems. For their target population, microsystems might be social groups, classrooms, etc., and macrosystems can be historical trends or social expectations. Data presented in this study were collected from the interviews of 15 STEM majors. Participants were graduate and undergraduate students coming from 15 different institutions and had different race, gender, and/or sexual identities. The findings supported a varying degree of support or discrimination among the several microsystems that influenced the participants. The support or discrimination had a lot to do with whom the participants interacted. Seven students reported positive experiences, mainly based on their interactions with STEM faculty. Nonetheless, negative experiences were also shared by the participants and all of them were associated with heterosexism, sexism, and genderism stemming from interactions with peers, co-workers, their perceptions of the STEM workforce, or anti- queer discrimination in the larger STEM community.

In the final part of this subsection, we synthesise the findings of studies situated outside of the university showing the working culture in STEM. In accordance with other reviewed studies (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Linley et al., 2018; Miller & Downey, 2020; Miller et al., 2021) that illustrated a superiority of masculinity and male-centrism in STEM, masculinity seemed to be an important aspect of the working culture in Alfrey and Twine (2017) study as well.

In Alfrey and Twine’s (2017) study, the researchers examined how tech workers with diverse racial and sexual identities navigated through male-dominated working environments. Data were obtained through interviews with 18 employees working for technology firms such as Dropbox, Google, Salesforce etc., in the greater San Francisco area. Participants were women who identified as gender-fluid and/or presented as gender nonconforming. One of the themes developed from the data was ‘geek culture’, a term associated with masculine dress code, leisure activities, specific personality traits, and gender expression. Geek culture was consistently mentioned by the participants as central to the workplace. In fact, they pointed out that the degree of geekiness one has was related to whether they will be considered a good programmer, software engineer, or technical expert. The responders characterised computer ‘geeks’ as white, Asian, and male. Hence, the researchers argued that ‘geek culture symbolised a type of normative masculinity that was racialised and class-infected. Furthermore, femininity was deemed a liability for bisexual women in all-male teams, which means that cultural traits associated with being feminine, such as wearing a dress, would lead in receiving disrespect.

The next study also examined the case of STEM professionals but shifted the focus on queer individuals’ professional identities. Mattheis et al. (2019) studied how queer STEM professionals developed and navigated their personal and professional identities. Data were collected from the interviews of 55 participants, as part of a bigger project that took place in the United States and Canada. The initial ‘Queer in STEM’ included also data from 1,427 responses to a 58-item online survey and 149 responses via email to a 10-item open questionnaire. The 55 participants had different gender and sexual identities and came from different STEM fields. Finally, at the time or the interviews (2013) they hold different positions such as M.S. Student, PhD Student, postdoctoral researcher, research assistant, research technician, instructor, government scientist, associate professor, professor, or even retired. The analysis of the data revealed three distinct but related and overlapping processes that characterise queer STEM workplace identity: defining (i.e. how participants came to understand themselves and self-identify as queer), forming (their construction of specific STEM identities), and navigating (how several expectations and influences impacted the participants’ expression of identity in the workplace). These three processes can explain the experiences of queer STEM professionals and how their identities are shaped by a combination of individual experiences and context. The findings pointed out that the dominance of heteronormativity was very central to the experiences of the participants when navigating queer identity to work.

Finally, the two following studies, the details of which will be described later since their findings fit better into later themes, also highlighted the (cis) heteronormativity in STEM culture. Yang et al. (2021) reported among others that the electrical and computer engineering students who participated in their study faced cisheteronormativity. According to Bilimoria and Stewart (2009), the queer faculty of science and engineering fields had a sense that ‘heterosexuality was routinely assumed’.

In conclusion, the overall perceived culture of learning or working STEM environments examined by the above studies was associated with a system of attitudes and bias that normalised the presence of heterosexual, cisgender, masculine male in STEM fields. At the same time being feminine, female, non-heterosexual and/or transgender was a liability to the participants. Oversexualisation and objectification of women and especially queer women, sexism, and genderism were also mentioned. These characteristics did not manifest equally in the culture of every discipline or context. In terms of disciplines, subfields deemed as more hard or technical were characterised as more masculine and non-tolerant to queer identities.

4.1.2. Hostility

The STEM climate was often characterised as hostile (Hughes, 2017; Mattheis et al., 2019), and unwelcoming for queer individuals (Kersey & Voigt, 2020). As mentioned earlier, participants from Cech and Waidzunas (2011) stated that there was little tolerance for queer identities in STEM. In fact, 9 of the 17 interviewees of this study who also participated in focus groups agreed that queer individuals were just tolerated within the engineering community. In Cooper’s et al. (2016), findings showed that almost all the biology students did not perceive the biology community as welcoming or accepting of their identities.

Another study reporting hostility was that of Bilimoria and Stewart (2009). The researchers studied the everyday experiences and career consequences for queer faculty with the goal of developing a theoretical model of the consequences of the academic workplace climate for queer faculty in science and engineering. Fourteen faculty members identifying as gay or lesbian participated in a one-hour-long-interview. The participants were 4 men and 10 women, coming from the science and engineering departments of two universities. An open-ended interview protocol was applied to explore topics related to climate for queer people, recruitment, positive and negative experiences as lesbian/gay, the importance of queer community, and perceptions of the experiences of queer graduate students.

The findings fall broadly into 4 topics: (a) work climate or atmosphere for queer faculty; (b) consequences of the climate; (c) identity-based role choices; and (d) the positive role that the work climate can play in mitigating negative effects. Both positive and negative experiences were mentioned across all types of scientific disciplines (life and physical sciences and engineering, field and laboratory sciences). The examples of the participants indicated direct and indirect expressions of hostility, open hostility, pressure to cover or tone down the cultural aspects that were associated with queerness. Examples of direct and indirect hostility mentioned in the above study are displayed in the next section of the study, where we describe experiences of harassment and discrimination, coming from the interaction with peers, supervisors, colleagues, or employers. An interesting point made by Bilimoria and Stewart (2009) was that a distinction between a hostile working climate and a climate that is characterised by clumsiness, silence, awkwardness, and discomfort about sexuality is not always easy. In any case, hostility, discomfort, and unwelcoming cultures can serve as a clear message of rejection of an individual’s identity.

4.1.3. Queer invisibility and culture of ‘silence’

Another theme constructed from our analysis related to STEM culture was invisibility and silence about queer issues. There was hardly any queer visibility, representation, welcoming of disclosure or discussion about queer identity and queer issues within STEM learning and working environments (Cooper et al., 2016; English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Hughes, 2017; Mattheis et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2021).

The studies described above showcased the silence and invisibility of culture in their findings. The social/technical binary that was indicated by Cech and Waidzunas (2011) participants highlights a notable example of silence. The participants admitted that discussion about social themes, such as identities, emotions, or elections, were deemed as irrelevant to the field and were ignored at best and criticised at worst. Similarly, Kersey and Voigt’s (2020) findings highlighted that STEM was considered ‘neutral from identity’. For instance, a gay, gender fluid, African American participant characterised Mathematics as ‘pretty straightforward’ and stated that there was no room for queer or social justice issues in general. For another participant, a bisexual genderfluid fem physicist, the notion of STEM as neutral from identity did not provided space to process her identity within the classroom and contributed to the silence of her queersness. In general, all the undergraduate queer students that participated in the second study of Kersey and Voigt perceived STEM as ‘removed’ from someone’s personal identity. Mattheis et al. (2019) too found that heteronormative assumptions frequently silenced conversations about gender and sexuality in STEM workplaces.

According to the participants of Bilimoria and Stewart (2009), personal lives were not part of the discourse in the faculty of science and engineering, the disclosure of a queer identity was not common and there was a silence around queer issues, which was sometimes interpreted as a solution to the discomfort or friction. The queer biology students of Cooper’s et al. (2016) suggested coming out was perceived as inappropriate within the biology community. Finally, a different example of silence was lack of visible queer voice, role models, and representation within academic spaces, along with non-visibility that were mentioned by the survey responders of English and Fenby-Hulse (2019).

The culture of silence was demonstrated in other studies as well. Forbes (2020) interviewed 20 queer undergraduate students coming from sociology, psychology, political science, arts and other non-STEM departments of a US public university. The author used the microclimate concept to describe how queer students understand an academic major department as being a ‘chilly’ or ‘warm’ environment, based on reputation or their own experience. The participants consisted of a diverse group in terms of age, sexuality, gender identity, race, school year and were recruited through listservs and snowball. However, despite the researchers’ attempt to have a wide selection of students in terms of majors, the final sample was in humanities, social sciences, or arts. None of the queer participants were STEM majors, which the author partly explained by the suggestion that queer students are ‘tracked intro certain areas’ like the ones mentioned. This study was part of a bigger one that examined students’ perceptions of straight allies. The findings demonstrated that queer students regarded some fields, like STEM, as ‘queer-free by virtue’, either because discussion of queerness was absent since it simply ‘didn’t come up’ or because it was inappropriate, and as such, ignored or met with resistance.

In other cases, such as the study of Yang et al. (2021), the silence culture was associated with sharing a personal (queer) identity and details about one’s personal life. Yang et al. (2021) conducted a mix-methods research and collected data through a survey and four 1-hour-long, semi-structured focus groups to examine how queer electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students experience engineering culture. Survey participants were 854 undergraduate ECE students at a large southern public university in the United States, with diverse race, gender, and sexual identities. Survey responders were asked to describe their gender identity and sexual orientation by ranking items on a 5-point Likert scale. Nine of the queer students participated also in focus groups that were designed to address sense of belonging and discrimination with regard to queer and other identities.

Survey data showed that one of the top forms and sources of discrimination was ‘pressure to keep silent”. The STEM culture was formed by a culture of silence. That was obvious also in the focus group findings. Some of the interviewers admitted that silence around their identities was stifling compared to the openness they had experienced in liberal art classes, where sharing a personal identity within a course was welcomed. This case, according to the researchers, highlights how silence around personal identities can reduce one’s sense of belonging. According to other participants, talking about queer issues was described as ‘vilification’ and queer identities were often ‘on the backburner” (p. 4). Once again, the idea that social or identity issues and sharing details about personal stuff are incompatible with an engineering profession was underlined by the participants.

Similarly, Hughes (2017) findings affirm that silence regarding queer status is one of STEM culture’s characteristics. Through in-depth, semi-structured, individual interviews and focus groups, the author tried to construct a broader narrative of the participants’ lives, based on prior to college experiences and future expectations. Seven engineering students at a Southwest United States public university were interviewed. The first theme developed from the data related to the field’s climate. Participants described the climate as ‘neutral’ or ‘silent. This highlighted the fact that within this setting, queer identity and experiences were irrelevant to being an engineer. This norm is strengthened by the construction of technical/social binary. Being gay was more assimilated to social than technical skills. Overall, queer invisibility made the climate potential hostile.

Taken together, the findings of the reviewed studies describe a culture in STEM spaces that is unwelcoming and at time hostile to queer individuals, embedded in social norms that reinforce cisheteronormativity, sexism, genderism maintain the absence or silence of other identities. ‘Heterosexuality was routinely assumed’ (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009, p. 89) and hypermasculinity defined most of the STEM/S.T.E.M. disciplines. Women and queer individuals were treated as inferior. There was no room for representation, affirmation of queerness or raising of discussion relevant to queer issues. Everything related to a queer identity was suppressed or silenced as ‘irrelevant’ although there was room for conversations about heterosexual relationships and or comments that objectified and sexualised women.

It is important, however, as we examine the culture of the institutions or the overall culture of the disciplines, to keep in mind disciplinary differences together with the fact that not all queer individuals are the same or share the same experiences. In addition, a question remains about whether this heteronormative, queer unwelcoming culture is a STEM characteristic or a social phenomenon that runs across all disciplines or workspaces of some societies. Many of the reviewed studies provided evidence that STEM fields were constructed in the participants’ minds as masculine and queer-free. In fact, some studies highlighted that the harder a subfield was considered, the more hostile and masculine it was. Following, we describe the experiences of queer individuals in STEM reported by the participants of the reviewed studies.

4.2. RQ2: experiences of queer individuals in STEM

The findings associated with the experiences of queer individuals in STEM are organised under two sub-themes: a) examination of experiences at the relational/interpersonal level, i.e. experiences from interactions of queer individuals and their peers, colleagues, supervisors, or employers, b) the participants’ views, concerns, emotions, and wellbeing.

While examining the relational level, we came to understand that queer individuals were targets of negative behaviours such as (i) discrimination (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Miller et al., 2021; Patridge et al., 2014), (ii) misgendering (Barthelemy, 2020; Forbes, 2020; Mattheis et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2021) and other types of harassment most often in the form of verbal abuse (Alfrey & Twine, 2017; Barthelemy, 2020; Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Pham, 2017; Cech & Waidzunas, 2021; Cooper et al., 2016; English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Kersey & Voigt, 2020; Miller et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2021). Finally, findings indicated (iii) social exclusion (Barthelemy, 2020; Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Pham, 2017; Cech & Rothwell, 2018) and (iv) devaluation of professionalism along with negative career consequences (Barthelemy, 2020; Cech & Pham, 2017; Hughes, 2018; Kersey & Voigt, 2020; Mattheis et al., 2019; Patridge et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2021).

At an individual level, queer participants reported experiencing negative emotions, e.g. feeling not welcomed or accepted (Cech & Rothwell, 2018), feeling invisible or ignored (Miller et al., 2021), feeling less respected (Barthelemy, 2020), fearfulness and self-censoring (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009), fear of rejection (Cooper et al., 2016), and feelings of isolation and exclusion (English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Miller & Downey, 2020). Queer individuals in STEM felt the need to hide their sexuality or cover anything that reminds people of queer culture (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Pham, 2017; Cech & Rothwell, 2018; Mattheis et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2021). This pressure to hide and the constant debate whether to disclosure their identity or not, worrying about being accepted or excluded or even harassed created an additional emotional burden and cognitive load (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; Cooper et al., 2016; Kersey & Voigt, 2020). As a consequence, queer status was associated with many negative health and wellness issues, such as stress, agony, insomnia, etc (Cech & Rothwell, 2018; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011, 2021; Mattheis et al., 2019). In what follows, we discuss further these experiences.

4.2.1. Interpersonal level experiences

Harassment. Cech and Waidzunas (2021) examined possible professional, social, and personal disadvantages associated with queer status. The data used for the study were gathered from a large-scale national US survey which included both queer and non-queer participants. More than 2,500 STEM professionals participated and over 1,000 of them identified as queer. The researchers examined five dimensions in order to shed light to responder’s work experiences and potential inequalities. They found that the queer STEM professionals were about 30% more likely than their non-queer peers to have experienced harassment at work in the past year.

Barthelemy (2020) provided important insight in the types of harassment that queer individuals experience in STEM. Barthelemy’s study presented qualitative findings on the exclusionary behaviours and the harassment experienced by queer individuals in physics. The research was conducted by the American Physical Society (APS) ad hoc committee on LGBT Physicists (C-LGBT). Data were collected from a survey that included fixed as well as open-ended questions. The survey was designed to address issues related to the climate in physics learning and working environments such as campus, classroom, and workplace, and the persistence of the participants. The survey instrument was sent out to the queer Physicists list-serv of ally and queer physicists and posted in social media in order to be distributed globally by snowball sampling. The data analysed in this study were 71 open-ended responses to the question Within the past year, have you personally experienced any exclusionary (e.g. shunned, ignored), intimidating, offensive and/or hostile conduct (harassing behaviour) that has interfered with your ability to work or learn on your campus or workplace because of your gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or sexual identity?

The responses were coded iteratively for the identity target of exclusionary behaviour and the kind of exclusionary behaviour. From the ‘identity target’ theme, three categories emerged: gender expression, women, and queer. Gender expression, i.e. clothing, behaviours, etc., socially aligned with one’s assigned gender, was one of the reasons many participants experienced exclusionary behaviour. For example, co-workers and other physicists did not respect transgender people’s pronouns, mocked transgender people, and made hostile remarks to a male cisgender participant for his wardrobe and for painting his nails despite being a ‘boy’. Women also experienced exclusionary behaviour. In fact, the exclusionary experience discouraged some participants to reveal their sexual orientation. Finally, queer participants, were receivers of inappropriate questions related to their sexuality and negative comments. For instance, a fellow graduate student of a participant characterised fighting for queer equality as whining and labelled anything he disliked as ‘gay’. Five different types of exclusionary behaviours were developed during the analysis: exclusion, misgendering, sexual harassment, physical touching, and verbal abuse. Exclusion was both from professional activities and from social events.

The synthesis of the findings of the reviewed studies also points to different forms of harassment. Misgendering was a common type of reported harassment. Both queer students and professionals were misgendered unintentionally and in several cases, peers did not respect transgender people’s pronouns intentionally (Barthelemy, 2020; Forbes, 2020; Mattheis et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2021). One of responders in Barthelemy’s (2020) study had to go through formal procedures and a long appeal hearing to have their correct pronouns used. According to Forbes (2020) results, for trans and nonbinary students, language and misgendering can be alienating. Queer college students from STEM and non-STEM majors participated in his study. A trans student ended up participating less in a sociology class and finally dropping out because they were not supported in using their preferred pronouns during their transitioning. The participant eventually took a year off to avoid the awkwardness and returned using he/him pronouns. Interestingly, the student was surprised because he had been singled out by a professor of the social work department. He pointed out that if this had happened in biology or physical sciences, it would not be a surprise. The above demonstrates once again how STEM is constructed for some students to be quite a ‘chilly’ environment for queer students, where misgendering among other types of harassment is expected.

Other forms of harassments shared by the participants included verbal abuse, verbal sexual harassment – even to a teenager by male co-workers in their thirties (Barthelemy, 2020), aggression and microaggressions, disrespectful treatment, crude comments, misogynistic comments, mocking, inappropriate questions related to participants’ sexuality, sexist and homophobic jokes, derogatory jokes and comments, homophobic and transphobic statements, anti-queer discourses (e.g. slurs, jokes) (Alfrey & Twine, 2017; Barthelemy, 2020; Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009; Cooper et al., 2016; English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Kersey & Voigt, 2020; Miller et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2021). For example, an undergraduate biology student, a participant of Cooper’s et al. (2016) research, revealed her bisexuality after a transphobic comment in order to defend her community. As a result, she received comments such as ’we don’t need to know your dirty secrets […] I don’t go around flaunting who I have sex with […]. We don’t need to know about people who fall outside of the norms’.” (p. 6). Likewise, in Barthelemy’s (2020) study, one of the queer physicists had to listen to a senior grad student who used to supervise them, preaching against same sex marriage. He gave the participant a mini speech explaining his opposition to same sex marriage which according to him ‘created worse environments for children to grow up’ (p. 9). Another participant of English and Fenby-Hulse’s (2019) mentioned their sexuality and a male colleague ‘invited’ them to have a threesome with their partner.

Participants also mentioned invalidation of women’s and queer individuals’ experience, as for example, questioning of sexual assault survivors, as well as stalking, inappropriate touching or attempt to touch, threatening behaviour, physical abuse (Barthelemy, 2020) and gender oppression e.g. women receiving backlash for presenting masculinity (Kersey & Voigt, 2020). Finally, queer researchers faced reactions such as perceived awkwardness, lack of respect and aggression (English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019).

Social Exclusion. Social exclusion, meaning ‘not being included in academic and social events or collaborations’ was one of the types of exclusionary behaviour reported in Barthelemy’s (2020) study. Queer physicists reported being left out from social events (Barthelemy, 2020). For instance, one participant stated she is being left out of social events for being a female and not ‘one of the guys’. Another participant shared: ‘[a]t both my current and previous institution, my peers have consistently left me out of social events and frequently talked about me behind my back with disrespectful language relating to my gender identity/expression’ (p. 7).

Cech and Rothwell (2018) examined queer inequality in engineering education. Data were collected through a survey, distributed in 8 engineering programmes in the US. Out of the 1,729 students who responded to the survey, 141 were queer. The responders were called to answer questions related to perceptions of the engineering profession, their experience from the class, and from being in college. More specifically, participants were called to answer questions related to marginalisation, devaluation of their work, negative health and wellness outcomes, and the climate of the engineering programme. The researchers hypothesised that queer participants experience greater marginalisation and devaluation and more negative health and wellness outcomes compared to their non-queer peers. Findings showed that when controlling for the variation explained by gender, race/ethnicity, SES, first-generation status, and school, queer engineering students were significantly less likely to be included in invitations to social gatherings and more likely to avoid social events, than their non-queer peers. Similar were the of the quantitative study carried out by Cech and Waidzunas (2021), who reported that queer STEM professionals were significantly more likely to experience social exclusion, e.g. to be excluded from invitations to after-work social gatherings.

Professional exclusion. Professional devaluation, professional exclusion, or negative career consequences were topics often addressed in the reviewed literature. For example, in some of the studies mentioned above, participants shared experiences like the following: ‘Frequently treated like a secretary. My input is ignored. My insight is laughed at’ (Barthelemy, 2020, p. 7); ‘It’s been slightly more than a year but my students tend not to believe I’m competent to teach… when they see me, because I’m a woman and a minority’ (Barthelemy, 2020, p. 7); ‘less access to lab equipment than my male colleagues. I feel I get less respect from staff and colleagues probably related to my appearance’ (Barthelemy, 2020, p. 7); ‘Where I’m in a class with other men, I just feel like they [perceive me] like I’m not that smart’ (Miller et al., 2021, p. 6); ‘Is this like an order? Is this I can’t come out or I will get fired?’ And he would not say anything about it. He just said ‘you shouldn’t do this. You should not tell other people’. And it destroyed my productivity” (Mattheis et al., 2019, p. 18).

In the study of Cech and Waidzunas (2021) mentioned above, the researchers examined also the dimensions of (a) career opportunities; (b) professional devaluation; and (e) intentions to leave STEM. Findings indicated that queer STEM professionals were (a) less likely to have access to career resources and opportunities for development and less likely to feel comfortable than their non-queer peers; (b) more likely to be devalued by their colleagues; and (c) more likely to consider leaving their position or STEM in general. The researchers associated this latter result with the greater likelihood of experiencing career devaluation and limitations as well as the exclusion. Researchers proceed to further analyses to address alternative explanations for the results such as, for example, queer having weaker qualifications or commitment. The findings offered counterevidence to alternative explanations, in this case showed that queer STEM professionals were equally highly educated and committed to their work. The findings of this study also provided yet another reminder that intersectionality lens is important since queer-identifying women and racial/ethnic minorities were more likely than white and men queer STEM professionals, respectively, to experience professional devaluation and harassment at work.

Cech and Pham (2017), using representative survey data from 21 STEM professional societies in the US, reported more career limitations and negative workplace experiences across a wide range of treatment and satisfaction measures, for queer employees than their nor queer peers, such as professional devaluation, being less likely to have adequate resources, and more likely to intend to leave STEM.

Hughes (2018) used a national, longitudinal data set of 4162 STEM aspiring college students across 78 different institutions, the Higher Education Research Institute in the US. The first sample included students expressing a will to follow a STEM trajectory. A follow-up survey, 4 years later, was used to examine the persistence of these students to STEM as opposed to switching into a non-STEM major. Student responses to the second survey were matched to their responses to the first. A percentage of 70 of the participants were still enrolled in STEM programmes. The researcher conducted a cross-tabulation between STEM retention and sexual minority status. Sexual minority students were 8% less likely to be retained in STEM compared to switching into a non-STEM programme, and this likelihood increases to nearly 10% when controlling for other factors that support retention in STEM.

Similarly, in a study examining the factors that influence the career consequences for queer STEM faculty, Patridge et al. (2014) analysed responses of 350 faculty survey participants. The participants were queer staff, coming from STEM and non-STEM US departments, from all 50 states. They were recruited through conferences, mail, social media, and snowball sampling. Variables for the analyses included: (a) climate variables (bullying, harassment, feeling ignored, shunned, etc.); (b) internal experiences (comfort across campus, department, classrooms); (c) identity (sexual orientation and professional outness); and (d) career consequences (consideration to leave their institution). Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and binary logistic regression were used for the purpose of analysis.

The highest level of discomfort across campus, department, and classroom was reported by STEM faculty. Surprisingly enough, higher levels of professional outness were reported by STEM faculty, and analysis showed that those who were out were less comfortable. STEM faculty members were also most likely to consider leaving their institutions. In fact, faculty members were more likely to consider leaving their current institution if they observed or experienced exclusionary behaviour or were not comfortable. The findings build upon the climate model presented by Bilimoria and Stewart (2009), in which they suggested that identity, climate, and internal experiences will have career consequences for queer faculty in science and engineering.

4.2.2. Individual level experiences

Negative Emotions. Erin Cech and William Rothwell (Cech & Rothwell, 2018) examined queer inequality in engineering education. Among others, the participants were called to answer their experience from the classrooms and being in college and more specifically related to marginalisation, devaluation of their work, negative health and wellness outcomes, and the climate of the engineering programme. Results for marginalisation showed that, when controlling for the variation explained by gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, first-generation status, and school, queer students were significantly less likely than non-queer students to report that they feel accepted by their engineering peers. In addition, they were significantly more likely to stay home from school as they did not feel welcome.

Stout and Wright (2016) investigated computing students’ sense of belonging and thoughts of leaving. The participants were majoring in US computing departments. The researchers collected data through an online survey that examined thoughts of leaving, reasons for leaving and their GPA. Initially, the investigated 854 graduate students (86 of whom identified as queer) and afterwards 944 graduates, 45 of whom where queer. The findings indicated that queer students were more likely to think about leaving computing because they felt a lower sense of belonging than their heterosexual peers. Queer women showed the lowest sense of belonging in computing compared to other students. Women within this group were particularly at risk – perhaps due to the intersections of being both a woman and a queer person.

Negative emotions and thoughts were shared by the participants of the following qualitative studies as well, whose details have been mentioned above. Bilimoria and Stewart’s (2009) findings highlighted that queer individuals experienced relative isolation. In Cooper’s et al. (2016) study, the findings revealed an underlying fear of rejection in the queer biology students. Queer physicists who participated in Barthelemy’s (2020) reported feeling less respected. English and Fenby-Hulse (2019) concluded that the intersections of a doctoral and a queer identity led some participants to feelings of isolation and exclusion. Queer STEM majors with disabilities from Miller and Downey’s (2020) reported feeling isolation both within and out of STEM spaces. For example, one of the participants, a bisexual, feminist woman of colour with disabilities majoring in geology stated

I can just see it in their eyes—they don’t think I belong there. I hope every day that I will fight to not internalie that. … If I continue to walk around and get stares from old white men that tell me that I don’t belong, one day I may internally, or even vocally, express that and truly think, maybe while I’m taking a test, maybe while I’m considering applying to graduate school, or maybe even before that, when I’m consider applying to university, that I don’t belong there. (p. 15)

Queer STEM students in the study of Miller et al. (2021) felt ‘invisible’ or subtly ‘ignored’.

Hughes (2017) participants – gay engineering students – shared that they encountered with hegemonic masculinity that affected their own internalised homophobia. Finally, in Cech and Rothwell’s (2018) study, survey results for marginalisation showed that, when controlling for the variation explained by gender, race/ethnicity, SES, first-generation status, and school, queer engineering students were more likely to feel the need to hide their personal lives.

Additional Burden. According to the results of Kersey and Voigt’s (2020), feeling that having the choice of disclosure brought additional burden. Queer STEM students were always looking for ‘safe enough’ people to come out to and always had to decide how ‘out’ to be, depended on the space. Cooper et al. (2016) interviewed queer biology students who participated in a course that was taught in an active learning way, thus participants had to interact more with their peers. The researchers suggested that while students were concerned for how their gender is perceived, they increased their cognitive load. Participants’ answers implied that some were spending class time thinking and worrying about their gender identity. The researchers highlighted that student were trying to maintain their identity and learn biology at the same time, which means that they had to ‘juggle multiple thoughts in their working memory’ (p. 10), hence ended up with heightened cognitive load. A queer biology student who transitioned names during that semester shared how exhausting was to continually worry about coming out and being judged and that this pressure was taking away the focus from the class (p. 11):

I worry ‘Do they like me? Do they think that I’m stupid? Am I trying too hard to let them know that I’m queer? Is that something that they’re going to think is ridiculous? Are they one of those people that wants to know?’ and ‘Do I want those people to know?’ It’s just so much pressure on talking to people and I think it takes away from what I get from a course if I’m focused on people’s perception of me versus what I’m actually supposed to be focusing on in the class.

Bilimoria and Stewart (2009) reported that their queer STEM faculty participants expended considerable labour to try to interpret cues. For example, one of the participants was constantly wondering if things were occurring because he was gay or because of other factors. Another participant described that his constant wondering created a sense of being in a cage of his own construction. Cech and Waidzunas (2011) findings indicated that strategies queer engineering students used to navigate the climate required huge amounts of emotional work. The agony and stress had several effects on queer people’s lives, such as extensive identity work.

Wellness and Health. Queer engineering students from Cech and Waidzunas (2011) faced anxiety about their future job security and more specifically about the impact of their sexuality on their job. An undergraduate gay man was worried that the ‘management people or upper people’ are going to see him as ‘just a gay man’ and judge him about that and ‘it would be an uphill battle’ to work against that. Another woman was concerned that being out while looking for a job in academia would have an impact on whether she would be hired. A third participant was afraid that even if she gets a job, they would fire her because she is gay, but they would use other excuses so she could not take legal action (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011, p. 21). In Cech and Rothwell’s (2018) survey data, queer status found to be related to negative health and wellness outcomes of queer STEM students, i.e. feeling exhausted, nervous, stressed, unhappy or depressed. Similarly, in Cech and Waidzunas (2021), queer STEM professionals were more likely to experience health and wellness difficulties e.g. depressive symptoms, insomnia, feeling nervous or stressed. In fact, transgender and gender nonbinary participants reported experiencing minor health problems, stress, and depressive symptoms more frequently than non-queer peers and cisgender sexual minority peer respondents. The researchers proposed that these difficulties might be associated with their greater likelihood of experiencing career limitations, devaluation, and marginalisation at work. Stress for maintaining separate identities was also mentioned by queer STEM faculty in the research of Mattheis et al. (2019).

Collectively, these studies outline that queer individual in STEM suffered various unpleasant experiences in their learning and working environments because of their queer identities. Participants of the studies have undergone different types of exclusionary behaviours from their peers, mentors, or colleagues and experienced negative emotions, thoughts, and health problems. These experiences had an impact on queer individuals’ personal, social, and professional life, and sometimes queer individuals ended up leaving STEM. However, we acknowledge that not all queer individuals are the same, nor all the contexts and the experiences. Positive experiences were also mentioned by some participants. For example, in Linley’s et al. (2018) study, participants although experienced anti-queer discrimination in the overall STEM community, they reported positive experiences as individuals from their interaction with the STEM faculty. Maybe, not at a level where they could perceive the faculty as allies, but at least they reported feeling respected. Similarly, in Bilimoria and Stewart’s (2009) study, despite description of negative characteristics of the work environment participants also mentioned experiences of ‘inclusion and comfort’ in specific work environments and university commitment to inclusion.

4.3. RQ3: types of coping mechanisms queer individuals in STEM adopt

Collectively, the findings of the reviewed studies showcase that queer individuals enacted coping mechanisms in order to navigate through the overall hostile culture of STEM environments and save themselves from hurtful experiences as the above mentioned. Coping mechanism developed from the data were (a) hiding their identity; (b) covering traits associated with queerness; (c) working harder than their peers; and (d) separating personal from professional/academic life.

Cech and Waidzunas (2011) examined coping techniques used by queer engineering students to navigate the climate. Tactics included passing, covering, the achievement of expertise, and living compartmentalised lives. ‘Passing’ enables a person to hide their queer identity and experience the privilege of a cisgender/heterosexual identity. Participants who passed would lie or avoid using gendered pronouns when talking about their relationships or introduce a partner as a friend to avoid coming out in peers. The most popular covering tactic was using humour. Sometimes participants would join or even initiate jokes about gays and lesbians which were often self-deprecating with the purpose of easing the social interactions or break the tension. Even openly gay participants felt the need to ‘cover’ their sexuality. Another coping technique was working extremely hard academically to gather expertise and indispensability to outweigh the queer status. Once they have gathered expertise, they would use it to navigate the climate. Some felt more comfortable outing themselves when holding a higher role such as teaching assistant.

Finally, living compartmentalised lives was another coping strategy as reported in Cech and Waidzunas (2011) data. Participants chose to or had to completely separate their engineering work and their social lives. That was a compartmentalisation which was not necessary for their heterosexual peers since the latter were able to openly talk about their partners and personal life. For instance, one participant felt that his peers could accept his orientation, but a discussion about his boyfriend was not welcome, even though they talked about their girlfriends. The problem, however, was not merely the appropriate topics of discussion. For some participants, excluding a whole part of their identity was a very difficult sacrifice that was necessary in order to succeed in engineering. The next example shows how compartmentalisation is sometimes even explicitly asked and can help a queer individual navigate a space. When a bisexual undergraduate woman disclosed her sexual identity to the president and vice president of Society of Women Engineers (SWE), their response was ‘that’s cool … just keep it to yourself’. In this case, separating personal from professional identity would have help her navigate the culture in SWE. Nevertheless, she eventually left the society to avoid the discomfort. This compartmentalisation and hiding can also be seen in the research of Mattheis et al. (2019). The stress stemming from hiding is obvious in the words of a participant who said ‘I’m living a double life. And many of my colleagues have never even seen me presenting as a woman … being trans is a very public thing, that has created a rift between public and private, or the professional and private’. (p. 18)

Passing was also enacted by the participants of Alfrey and Twine (2017). The researchers concluded that heterosexual women tech employees on big firms in the greater San Francisco area experienced microaggressions and gender discrimination because of their femininity and adherence to traditional gender roles. On the other hand, queer, bisexual, lesbian, or pansexual participants were able to avoid the routine microaggressions and partly be accepted ‘by cultivating a style of communication and dress that made them virtually indistinguishable from their male peers’. (p. 40) Therefore, gender fluidity was considered an asset for navigating the male-centred environment. Interestingly, one of the participants, identified as non-binary trans outside of work, but as female at work, in order to avoid confusing her co-workers and supervisors. However, she explained that femininity was a liability for her job as software engineering and that culturally ‘passing’ as one of the guys was partly the reason she was treated as a competent employee. Unfortunately, this was not the case for non-privileged racial background. Contrary to the white and Asian participants, gender fluidity did not help Black women receiving greater respect and being accepted. This example illustrates the need for intersectionality when examining oppression. A specific coping mechanism that was able to counteract the gender-based exclusion, was not enough to remedy for the exclusion coming from the intersections of race and gender.

In Bilimoria and Stewart’s (2009) study the work climate kept queer STEM faculty members from coming out or discussing their personal lives. In fact, many individuals avoided talking about partners or bring them in professional dinners, and had to consistently choose between being closeted, completely out, and selectively out. The same result emerged from the research of Yang et al. (2021). Queer electrical and computer engineering students had, sometimes, to split-second decisions about revealing or hiding their identities, based on the context, space, or people.

Cooper et al. (2019) conducted a survey (n = 60) of biology instructors in the US and found out that less than 20% are out to their students. Eleven of the queer instructors were interviewed about their experiences. Findings showed that among the reasons for concealing their queer identity were fear of losing their job and fear that the students might develop a negative opinion of them.

Miller et al. (2021) also presented different ways that their participants used to navigate STEM bro culture. Some chose to participate in STEM ‘bro’ culture in order to navigate, especially those who could pass as heterosexual. Others resisted the culture or distanced themselves even if their masculine expression of gender could help them be welcomed. Ciswomen students talked about felling the need to blend in this culture. Some of them tried to adopt a masculine or neutral dressing and some rationalised bro culture by blaming it on unconscious bias.

The study of Friedensen et al. (2021) provided one more example of differentiating the gender and sexuality’s presentations in private and public spheres of STEM. Their study presents a constructivist grounded theory study about queer students in higher education STEM fields. The research question guiding the overall study was how do queer students majoring in STEM experience and navigate campus learning environments and their disciplines/fields. The reviewed study, however, focused on the ways that queer students experienced time, space, and utopian futurity vis-`a-vis STEM majors and careers. Participants were students coming from four universities (three public and one private) located in the northeast and southeast of the US. Fifty-six students were recruited via electronic flyers. The researchers used semi-structured interviews to explore topics related to STEM experiences, campus (e.g. buildings, areas of campus, and classrooms), and interactions with people (e.g. STEM peers, faculty, and staff), and applied constant comparative analysis. The findings pointed out tensions between the participants’ queer and STEM identities. The participants would either enact a science identity or a queer one, and rarely practiced both at the same time. As a result, the participants had to alter their performance while navigating STEM fields, e.g. ‘act a specific way’ and constructing behaviours and a body language that were stereotypically believed as more compatible with being a professional in STEM fields. Moreover, the participants created a hoped-for future to reconcile their struggles in the STEM, where they could just imagine of a future workplace where they would not have to hide or strategically separate their queer and STEM identities.

Lastly, in Cooper’s et al. (2016), participants enacted a different strategy to save themselves from protentional harassment. Biology queer students of this study were enrolled in an active-learning course that required increased interactions among students. Some of the queer students stereotyped their peers based on characteristics in their effort to avoid potential discomfort with. So, they often looked for individuals to work with who did not match to gender norms, who were not hypermasculine, hyperfeminine, religious or politically conservative.

In summary, these findings showcase that queer in STEM encountered difficulties that their non-queer peers and colleagues did not. These difficulties and obstacles were raised against queer individuals because of their sexuality and gender, although intersection of identities might worsen the situation. Taken together, the reviewed studies described an unwelcoming, hostile culture, embedded in social norms that reinforced cisheteronormativity, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, silenced discussions about queer identities and associated STEM only with cis, heterosexual males. In this ‘chilly climate’, queer individuals suffered various unpleasant experiences vis-à-vis their queer identity. They underwent different types of exclusionary behaviours from their peers, mentors, or colleagues, such as discrimination, harassment, social exclusion, professional devaluation, and other career consequences. These behaviours degraded queer individuals in personal, social, and in academic – professional level, hurt their emotions, harmed their mental health. In order to navigate through the overall hostile culture of STEM environments and save themselves from hurtful experiences, queer individuals enacted coping mechanisms, such as hiding and covering. As a result, they were often forced to abandon a part of their identity and work harder than their peers in order to overcome these obstacles and prove they are ‘good enough’. Even then, they had to endure the hostility in silence and in some cases, they eventually chose to withdraw themselves from STEM trajectory.

5. Conclusions and implications

In this review study, we attempted to synthesise the existing knowledge base on the experiences of queer individuals in STEM learning and working environments. Twenty-four empirical studies were identified through different searching methods and analysed with a combination of deductive and inductive approaches to examine (a) the nature of STEM fields; (b) the experiences of queer individuals in STEM; and (c) their coping mechanisms. The synthesis of the findings of the 24 reviewed studies highlighted different ways in which cisheteronormativity, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia manifested and led to the exclusion of queer individuals in STEM fields. The lived experiences of queer individuals point to yet another narrative of how a certain group of people is subjected to oppression and marginalisation within STEM to such a degree that individuals sometimes choose to withdraw themselves. The findings provide an opportunity to advance our understanding of who is welcomed and how you need to be in order to be a valid student or professional in STEM fields. Therefore, this study makes a major contribution to the field of equity and social justice in STEM educational research, since it offers important insights on how queer individuals, a so far neglected community, are marginalised in STEM.

Throughout the synthesis of the findings, we discussed questions that can be raised, such as whether this culture is a typical representative culture of a higher-education institution or company of a heteronormative society or whether STEM culture – even despite the disciplinary differences – is somehow more unwelcoming and hostile to queer individuals. One of the limitations of this work is that it reports studies coming mostly from the US, with no further information that enables comparing the states and territories.

5.1. Implications for practice

In the next paragraphs, we present a brief synthesis of recommendations for promoting a queer affirmative culture in STEM universities and companies, as those emerged from the reviewed studies, suggested by us, the authors, or the participants of the included studies, as well as other studies and reports. We suggest: social and policy-level changes as a response to the cishetero and hostile culture of STEM; training and diversity events to prevent harassment; and all kinds of support for queer individuals to promote their mental health, and personal and professional thriving.

5.1.1. Macro practice: working with social institutions and systems

The findings of this study indicated a STEM culture that was cisheteronormative, sexist, irrelevant to queerness, and hostile. Social-level changes and policy-level changes are crucial in our effort to promote affirmation of diverse gender and sexual identities and gender expression in STEM higher education and the workplace.

Social-level changes. Bringing about social-level changes to overcome this culture requires the dismantling of biased mindsets and the unlearning of sexism, homophobia, biphobia, acephobia, and transphobia. Unlearning involves deconstructing, challenging, and overcoming assumptions that we were taught, e.g. to stop assuming that everyone is cisgender, straight, and allosexual; to stop associating appearance, femininity, or masculinity with any gender; to stop pathologising, objectifying, or oversexualising queer people, and especially women. Going beyond that, we can learn to acknowledge and allow other people the freedom to express their gender in any way they enjoy (dress, make-up, hairstyle, accessories, behaviours, mannerism, voice, body language); to allow other people the right to use a variety of terms to describe their gender identity or expression (boi, demiboy, genderfluid, soft butch, third gender, two-spirit, etc.); to normalise using pronouns, introducing ourselves with pronouns in the workplace, or classrooms, or campus, including pronouns on the bottom of our email signature, and in our CV.

Kersey and Voigt (2020) underlined the need to create a view of STEM that is fluid, open, complementary to queerness, and ‘does not promote the technical dimension at the expense of the social and communicative aspects of the disciplines’ (p. 20). Some ways to promote a change in culture would be to encourage dialogue about heteronormativity (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011), normalise coming out in the classroom (Cooper et al., 2016) or workplace, and adopt inclusive language (Cech & Rothwell, 2018; Kersey & Voigt, 2020; Linley et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2021).

Another way to promote affirmation of diverse gender and sexual identities and gender expression in higher education is to address discrimination in the classroom (Kersey & Voigt, 2020). STEM culture has normalised everyday incidents of harassment. The findings of the included studies list numerous forms of harassment that might seem ‘just funny’ to the offenders and the bystanders but cause real harm to the victims as well as the whole queer community. Cech and Rothwell (2018) suggested a zero-tolerance policy for homophobic and transphobic jokes. No tolerance for abusive behaviours should also be an everyday commitment. Anti-LGBT slurs, sexist jokes, terms and phrases that perpetuate stereotypes about queer people, hate speech, derogatory jokes, crude comments, and every other kind of verbal abuse should be considered harmful, socially inappropriate, and unacceptable.

Policy-level changes. Queer issues have been silenced in the past on the grounds of not addressing ‘such a personal and private’ aspect. Instead, gender identity, gender expression, and sexuality should be explicitly mentioned in school, university, and company policies (EU, 2016; International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Youth and Student Organisation (IGLYO), & Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions, (OBESSU), 2014). The need for institutional changes and improvement of policies to promote a supportive environment for queer people was highlighted by many of the included studies (Cech & Rothwell, 2018; Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; Mattheis et al., 2019; Patridge et al., 2014; Yoder & Mattheis, 2015) and other studies as well (Unsay, 2020).

5.1.2. Mezzo practice: working with faculty, peers, colleagues

Training for faculty and employers. Staff training is an essential component of a successful effort to prevent sexuality and gender-based harassment and promote a queer affirmative STEM culture (Boustani & Taylor, 2020; Cech & Rothwell, 2018; English & Fenby-Hulse, 2019; Forbes, 2020; Linley et al., 2018, Miller & Downey, 2020; Unsay, 2020; Yang et al., 2021). Equality and diversity awareness training for faculty or company employers should provide up-to-date knowledge and information on gender and sexuality issues (performance of gender, sexualities, coming out, pronouns, etc.) and address the exclusion of intersectional marginalised identities from STEM. The goal is to support the faculty to overcome cisheterosexual assumptions and train them to better understand, support, supervise, and mentor queer individuals. There is also a need for anti-harassment training to teach faculty and employers about inappropriate behaviours, inform them about the effects of abuse and discrimination on queer students and employees, and guide them to acknowledge unconscious bias. Anti-harassment training should also help faculty and employers to recognise inappropriate behaviours among students or employees and intervene to support the target.

Events and programmes for diversity. Courses, workshops, programmes, diversity days, and other events can raise awareness, prevent harassment, increase visibility, and overall contribute to a welcoming and affirming queer culture. Courses and workshops can address heteronormativity, inform about diverse sexualities and genders and gender expression, educate about the forms of exclusion queer people experience in general and specifically in STEM, and the impact on their health and career. Events that enhance visibility could take the form of celebrations, e.g. celebrations of the coming out day, celebrations of the achievements of queer people in STEM (Lynn Conway, Alan Turing, Sally Ride, Angela Clayton, Ben Barres, Lauren Esposito, Antentor O Hinton, Jr., Chanda Prescod-Weinstein), or the form of colloquia and speaker series to increase queer visibility of openly queer STEM graduates and professionals (Cech & Rothwell, 2018).

5.1.3. Micro practice: working with queer individuals

Finally, it is of utmost importance to provide queer individuals with informational, emotional, psychological, and practical support. The findings of this study showed that STEM learning and working environments, instead of being a safe space for queer students and professionals, negatively affected their emotional and mental health. Providing them with a safe, affirmative school, academic, and workplace environment is essential to promoting their mental health and well-being. That is why granting queer students or professionals access to individual informational, emotional, and psychological support is an important step to guide their way to academic or career success, a sense of belonging, and well-being (IGLYO, 2014; López López et al., 2021).

Informational support. Informational material provided by universities or companies can take the form of posters and leaflets advertising queer groups, communities, or organisations displayed on boards. Resources should always include positive representations of people of colour (Black, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), Native and Indigenous, and so on) and LGBTQ people, history, and events (Truong et al., 2020a; Truong et al., 2020b; Zongrone et al., 2020a; Zongrone et al., 2020b). Moreover, the university or company website can offer a database of useful websites related to equity and discrimination (IGLYO, 2014), visibility campaigns, and professional organisations for queer in STEM, e.g. 500 Queer Scientists, Pride In STEM, oSTEM, Out to Innovate™, LGBTQ STEM Berlin, QueersInScience, etc.

Emotional support – Mentoring and Communities. Miller and Downey (Miller & Downey, 2020), along with Patridge et al. (2014) suggested mentoring and coaching for queer individuals in STEM. Similarly, Boustani and Taylor (2020) proposed ‘buddy systems’ to pair students with senior members of staff as mentors. In addition, many of the included studies highlighted the importance of queer communities (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; Forbes, 2020; Kersey & Voigt, 2020; Yang et al., 2021). The existence of affinity groups and shared spaces, either for diversity or specifically for queer students, faculty, professionals fosters a sense of community.

Psychological support. Queer people need access to individual counselling or support groups to navigate experiences of oppression and navigate better in their academic or professional environment. Moreover, they need access to resources for psychological treatment and suicide prevention programmes (López López et al., 2021). A crucial step towards promoting queer individuals’ mental health and wellness is to provide them with access to psychologists and resources that are informed with up-to-date knowledge regarding queer issues.

5.2. Implications for theory and research

This study has highlighted the underrepresentation and discrimination and, hence, the need for better representation of queer individuals in STEM. If we would like to expand our knowledge base on the representation of queer individuals in STEM, there are several possible steps we could take. Further quantitative work could illustrate the underrepresentation of queer individuals in STEM majors and careers in different contexts. National surveys could show the participation rates of STEM students and the workforce in relation to the representation in the country population, as well as the proportion of queer individuals climbing the academic ladder, and especially at senior researcher roles, higher making decision-positions, and leadership positions. Quantitative research could also demonstrate the correlation between the proportion of queer individuals in STEM and several factors, such as the inclusive policies in place.

Future work could also establish how a queer identity may lead to exclusionary and discriminative experiences in the different disciplines of STEM and in different geographical contexts as well, since most of the reviewed studies were situated in the US. Moreover, no studies were found that examined queer participants who have already withdrawn themselves from STEM careers. Such studies would be complementary to the included studies in this review and would help us better approach the complexity of the issue of underrepresentation of queer individuals in the sciences.

While the reviewed studies focused on and highlighted underrepresentation and the need for enhancing representation, we would like to take the discussion a step further and pose the following question: representation is a vital goal, but how queer would it be of us to set a goal of simply fitting within dominant discourses and existing power structures? To build on the concerns of other scholars (e.g. Duran et al., 2020), what is the point of representation if it does not come together with disrupting the norms that exclude, dismantling the oppressive systems that seek to maintain power, and striving to transform the educational systems? Duran et al. (2020) call on scholars to engage in interdisciplinary research and go beyond embodied identities when they consider queerness and trans*ness in research. The science education research has more to gain when queerness and trans*ness are viewed not merely as identity markers but as concepts that ‘symbolise a politic, an analytic, and a form of world-making’ and embody resistance to domination (Duran, p. 52). This shift will unlock the radical potential of queerness to (a) serve as an analytic of how systems of power dictate accepted ways of being and knowing; (b) help us envision new ways of existing, knowing, and conducting research; and (c) push for socio-political transformation that will lead to new research and educational worlds.

A question that arises is: how do we move forward to include queerness in a way that goes beyond embodied identities? Duran et al. (2020) discuss several implications for research and practice while engaging with queer and trans* studies in higher education, including the benefits of doing interdisciplinary research, taking up epistemologies, frameworks, and theories outside of our field, and engaging with critical theories such as queer theory, Black quare theory, crip theory, critical trans politics, and intersectionality (p. 50). They point out the potential of queerness to reshape ‘the field’s prioritisation on topics such as scientism, neoliberalism, and modernist conceptions of the self-contentions’ (p. 3).

The majority of the studies reviewed were not framed within a theoretical framework; hence, we stress the importance of employing critical studies when we do research on queer in STEM. The experiences of queer individuals in the included studies pointed out intersectional discrimination. We therefore suggest the use of intersectionality lens when researching queer individuals in STEM. Intersectionality, as an approach, emphasises at the ways various forms of oppression interact to constitute a subject’s experience. The concept was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) to address the distortion of Black women’s experience through the single-axis analysis of feminist theory and anti-racist politics.

We recommend the use of queer theory (see Fifield & Letts, 2019 for more about queer theories and STEM education). Even though historically associated with gay and lesbian studies, queer theory goes beyond normalising homosexuality to disrupt the very idea of the heterosexual/homosexual binary (Gunckel, 2009; Kersey & Voigt, 2020). But beyond that, queer theory aims to disrupt all kinds of normative processes, categories, and definitions (Gunckel, 2009). Therefore, providing a definition for queer theory is a great challenge (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; Snyder & Boradway, 2004). By applying queer theory to education, researchers can highlight and disrupt the heteronormativity of educational spaces such as schools and universities, meaning the cultural practices that reinforce heterosexuality as normal (Snyder & Boradway, 2004). Moreover, they can create space for non-heteronormative identities not only by giving the floor to marginalised identities and stories but also by questioning ‘what counts as knowledge […] how knowledge is constructed and who constructs it’ (Gunckel, 2009, p. 66). Especially in the case of science education, studies have indicated how heteronormative ideas and sex/gender binaries are being promoted (e.g. Snyder & Boradway, 2004; Bazzul & Sykes, 2011). Gunckel (2009) argued that the emphasis of science education on some skills, such as classification, might promote the false idea that every object and organism is to be classified, organised, labelled so as to fit into predetermined natural categories, and anything not fitting into this ‘neat package’ will be viewed as not normal. Hence, using queer theory in STEM education also means resisting the binary thinking.

Specifically, for research with/about trans* and non-binary individuals in STEM, we recommend engaging with critical trans frameworks for education (Kean, 2020). Trans epistemologies are important to better understand and disrupt dominant white settler, colonialist, capitalists, and heteropatriarchal ideologies about gender.

In terms of future research, an exploration of the role of queer representation, queer mentors, queer STEM teachers, and queer communities in supporting queer individuals’ trajectories in STEM could be of great importance. Moreover, studies focusing on the experiences of queer students in school settings are also crucial to understanding how heteronormative ideas are embedded in classroom practices and how school science welcomes or not queer students to identify with and engage in STEM. For example, research could explore how STEM textbooks (e.g. see Snyder & Boradway, 2004) might reproduce heteronormative ideas about who gets to be a STEM person through emission, omission, lack of representation, and other ways.

Finally, a crucial shift we need to make is to move beyond considering queer individuals in STEM as merely ‘vulnerable victims’ and start telling the story of how they are ‘an enriching source of diversity for scientific development’ (Götschel, 2019, p. 135). The experiential knowledge of being trans is a source of power and agency since it directly challenges dominant ideologies and narratives of gender (Kean, 2020) and can potentially help one to better understand and deconstruct other oppressive systems and ways of knowing. There is abundant room for further progress in highlighting the intersections of queer and STEM identity, how one informs the other, how a queer identity works as an asset for STEM students or workforce, and how the unique insight brought by individuals contributes to the quality of their work and makes them a more critical scholar, scientist, engineer, a more empathetic teacher, and so on (e.g. see Gutzwa, 2021). Moving beyond deficit mindsets would also allow us to examine occurrences of queer joy in STEM working, or teaching, and learning spacesfor example, exploring what STEM education community has to learn through projects such as ‘science is drag’, a community-driven show celebrating science through the power of drag.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2024.2313903

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the ALLINTERACT .

Notes on contributors

Nelly K.M. Marosi

Nelly K.M. Marosi (she/they) is a doctoral student at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the University of Athens in Greece. Her research interests are in the areas of queer affirmative pedagogies, culturally responsive pedagogies, identity-based research, and science engagement of minoritised students.

Lucy Avraamidou

Lucy Avraamidou (she/her) is a professor of science education at the University of Groningen. Her research is associated with theoretical and empirical explorations of what it means to widen and diversify STEM participation in school and out-of-school settings through the lens of identity.

Mónica López López

Mónica López López (she/her) is an associate professor of child and family welfare at the University of Groningen. Her research interests include disparities in child protection decisions, the participation of children and families in decision-making processes, and the experiences of LGBTQIA+ youth in care.