Academia is not doing enough to include LGBTQ+ scientists and make them feel safe while doing research in the field — so says a group of students and assistant professors who've published a paper with recommendations for improvement.
The paper, published Wednesday by theJournal of Applied Ecology, goes beyond using the proper pronouns, says Earlham College Assistant Professor Jaime Coon. “While this is really important, our paper goes further by encouraging institutions and mentors to think about survival and physical safety in the field.”
For queer field ecologist and Ph.d. candidate Nathan Alexander, this is personal. He helped write the paper after he experienced unsafe situations in some rural towns when venturing out.
“What might be considered risky behavior in order to leave late at night, to go to the town over to find community there, or other issues such as that,” says Alexander, who goes to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Coon, also a queer scientist, says, “We have folks on our author team who have not had adequate housing because they were trans. So, a lot of housing and fieldwork situations is binary. And there are times where trans individuals have been asked to live completely separately, such as living in a tent when everyone else has access to bunk houses.”
Coon says there is an assumption that everyone is heterosexual or cisgender, and pressure to conform can result in victimization, isolation and mental health issues.
The paper recommends field teams should avoid the use of gender-segregated housing and bathrooms when traveling, and buying size-inclusive field gear. Institutions should also have well developed safety plans.
The researchers acknowledge they wrote the paper with ecological fieldwork in mind, but the recommendations are broadly applicable to anyone interested in LGBTQ+ inclusion work.
“This isn’t just about making institutions of higher education a better place,” Coon says. “This is about making everywhere a better place.”
