Newest Victims on Campus Are LGBT Physicists
In the future, everyone will be a victim for 15 minutes.
Colleen Flaherty reports at Inside Higher Ed.
Climate Concerns Among LGBT Physicists
Physics is often characterized as having a tough climate for women, of whom there are still relatively few working in the field (even compared to the other sciences). But the American Physical Society has made inroads in addressing the issue, offering site visits sponsored by its Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, for example, as well as by its Committee on Minorities. But what about the climate for lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual physicists? Faced with an absence of data on the matter, the society created an ad hoc committee to assess working conditions for these populations and establish recommendations based on its findings.
The committee’s report, “LGBT Climate in Physics: Building an Inclusive Community,” was released Tuesday at the society’s March meeting, in Baltimore. Major findings from climate survey targeting LGBT physicists on which the report was based in part include that women, and especially gender-nonconforming and transgender respondents, experience and observe harassment at higher rates than their male counterparts. That gendered dynamic also was observed in levels of discomfort in the workplace and feelings about whether one’s workplace was supportive.
More than 20 percent of self-identified LGBT respondents to a climate survey reported experiencing exclusionary behavior in the past year, while 40 percent reported observing exclusionary behavior due to gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation or sexual identity. Among transgender respondents, those response rates were 49 percent and 60 percent, respectively.
Perceptions of Departmental Climate Among Male, Female and Gender-Nonconforming Respondents
Transgender Concerns
“If there’s anything that’s got to be taken away from this report, it’s that we need to be thinking about how we can be including people who are [transgender and gender-nonconforming] and making a better environment for those folks,” Ramón S. Barthelemy, a Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and report committee member, said during a news conference Tuesday.
New effort to improve climate for LGBT physicists (Inside Higher Ed | News)
Comments
Oh, please, enough of all this manufactured diversity garbage. Only the minds of liberals could there be this much nonsense concentrated in one place. If the focus is on accommodating the latest special snowflake, then there is little focus on the skills and knowledge necessary to advance scholarship in science and technology. A better environment is created when people grow up and deal with their psychological baggage as adults and don’t need a bunch of social justice warriors making a “safe” environment to coddle people who think the world should be fair. Get over yourselves.
Let me see if I can get this straight…more groups with a political benefit to victimization responded that they felt victimized than groups with no political gain at stake? You don’t say!