Almost 40% of biologists who identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming report experiencing offensive, intimidating and hostile behaviour at work, a survey finds. So, too, do nearly one in five biologist respondents who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer, according to the study of more than 1,400 researchers, which its authors describe as the largest survey so far of professional life experiences among LGBTQ+ biologists1.
“One person experiencing that is one person too many,” says lead author Katelyn Cooper, a biology education researcher at Arizona State University in Tempe, who has been recognized for her research into making science more inclusive for LGBTQ+ people.
Those who identified as transgender or gender-nonconforming (TGNC) were much more likely to have lower morale and less of a sense of belonging and comfort in professional settings and workplaces than were both their straight peers and lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer (LGBQ) biologists who identify as cisgender — their sex assigned at birth, the survey found.
The study was published on the bioRxiv preprint server in late January; it has not yet been peer reviewed.
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The survey was distributed by e-mail and social media in June and July 2023, through five professional societies, namely the American Society for Cell Biology, the Biophysical Society, the Genetics Society of America, the International Society for Stem Cell Research and the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research. The study team obtained responses from 1,419 biologists, 486 (34%) of whom identified as LGBTQ+, including 153 as TGNC.
Respondents were mostly white (64%), were university faculty members (49%), and based in the United States (68%). Twenty per cent of respondents were university staff, lecturers or postdoctoral researchers, 15% were graduate or undergraduate students, and 11% held positions outside of academia. Eleven per cent of respondents identified as Asian, followed by 8% who identified as Hispanic, Latin or of Spanish origin. Outside the United States, respondents were mostly based in the United Kingdom (4.6%), Canada (4.2%) or Japan (1.8%). In all, the survey drew responses from 44 countries.
Growing hostility
The survey was conducted before the current Trump administration in the United States issued a flurry of executive orders cancelling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and seeking to ban the use of gender-related language by federal agencies. But it came amid a background of increasing political attacks against the LGBTQ+ community.
In 2023, when Cooper and her co-authors distributed the survey, 88 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation were enacted in the United States, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The LGBTQ+ community is afforded greater legal protections and acceptance in many parts of Europe, but an anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation backlash, reportedly orchestrated and financed mainly by Russia, seems to be growing there, as well.
Jess McLaughlin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, who identifies as trans and non-binary, says that although they didn’t take the survey, they aren’t surprised by the number of trans biologists who reported hostile, intimidating or offensive behavior. “It’s something we’ve known anecdotally,” McLaughlin says — and, for them, through personal experience.
While teaching during their PhD at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, despite wearing men’s suits to class, McLaughlin was criticized in student evaluations as unprofessional. “The problem to them was that I was the one wearing the suit,” they say.
But an incident near campus pushed McLaughlin to the brink and contributed to their decision to wrap up their PhD as quickly as possible and leave Oklahoma: “I was running and somebody was chasing me and yelling slurs,” they say.
McLaughlin’s experience aligns with the survey, in which 50% of TGNC respondents reported experiencing “exclusionary, intimidating, offensive or hostile conduct” outside of work.
At the same time, the survey documented a sharp increase, relative to a 2019 survey (also led by Cooper, who then was at the University of Central Florida in Orlando), in the proportion of LGBTQ biologists who were out to their undergraduate students (76% versus 20%).
Maeve McLaughlin, a molecular microbiologist at the University of Michigan in Flint, who identifies as transgender, says that she goes out of her way to make her students feel comfortable, including highlighting the work of researchers affiliated with the group 500 Queer Scientists.
Doing so, she says, makes it easier for students to come forward to seek guidance. “I have a lot of trans and gender-nonconforming students who are more comfortable asking questions,” she says.
