INCLUSIVITY

Inclusivity in STEM

Intro

The UAlberta iGEM team is also very passionate about increasing inclusivity in STEM and ensuring that women and minorities are not the minority in iGEM, and that their experiences are positive as they can work in a safe space. To accomplish this goal the UAlberta iGEM team decided to conduct a demographics and inclusivity survey and host a girls in STEM night.

Girls in STEM Night

Team UAlberta recognizes that there is a disparity in the number of women and gender minorities in STEM, as women in the United States make up less than 36% of all STEM fields at any level of post-secondary studies [2]. A large cause of this problem is that women and gender minorities are not encouraged from a young age to pursue STEM fields, and if they are, they are rarely told how or that they should try and climb the ladder, so to speak. This leads to the “leaky pipe”, basically girls and gender minorities are equally represented, but as they get older and positions get larger and have higher pay grades, women and gender minorities have fewer opportunities.

Demographic and Inclusivity Survey

“Science, despite its claims of objectivity, does not happen in a vacuum – science is part and product of a society that is shaped by and for a specific subset of identities. Studies have demonstrated gender bias in both conducting and publishing scientific research, and op-eds document unhealthy work climates and professional disadvantages for people who are not white, who are first-generation college students, people who are queer, and people with disabilities.” - Lila Leatherman [3]

Introduction

Inspired by the work of Paris Bettencourt in 2014, we created our Demographic and Inclusivity survey. The objective of this survey is to learn about iGEM’s demographics, including information about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Additionally, we sought to learn more about iGEMers experiences. Below, you can access the survey, look at the data that we consolidated, and read our recommendations for change. These recommendations aim to make iGEM a safer and more inclusive place for everyone!

We would like to recognize from the beginning that this survey sample size of 179 people is very small in comparison to the iGEM community. However, this sample of the community is representative of baseline information about the iGEM community and provides us with room to improve our survey. We would also like to acknowledge all of the members of team UAlberta who worked on this survey are cisgender women who come from backgrounds of relative privilege as middle class, Canadian citizens. Finally, we would like to reiterate that the goal of the survey was not to attempt to discuss controversy or assign blame. The main goal of this survey is to consolidate demographic information that can then be used to provide recommendations for improvement. Most importantly, Team UAlberta hopes this data can be used to give foundation to healthy, inclusive, progressive and non-confrontational dialogue about how we, as the iGEM community, can make iGEM an amazing experience for all!

We would also like to note that our survey is still open! If you would like to fill it out you can fill it out here, as we are still very interested in learning more about iGEM and this community that we love so much.

Why the survey?

We created the survey as the “underrepresentation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and computer science) has attracted considerable attention” [4] in recent years, and as many women in STEM can attest the issues with being included in STEM fields continue to persist. Moreover, when researching women's inclusion in STEM, we found that:
“[W]omen… [makeup only] 34% of STEM bachelor’s degree holders and 23% of science and technology workers among Canadians aged 25 to 64. The shortage of women in STEM is widely recognized as detrimental to women, since science and technology occupations, particularly in engineering and computer science, are among the highest-paying and fastest-growing occupations. Additionally, numerous analyses have found that greater diversity strengthens innovation and performance.” [4]

This statistic proves to manifest itself around the world, as women everywhere struggle with being excluded from and discriminated against in STEM fields. In the United States, only 12.6% of bachelor's degrees and only 5% of doctorates in STEM fields are held by women [5]. It is also worth mentioning that after receiving their doctorate degrees, most women struggle to receive tenure and as a result end up working as assistant professors. These numbers and experiences are similar in India, and other nations around the world [6].

The case is worse for those who fall outside of the gender binary. There are very few numbers that report on people who identify outside the gender binary. In a 2016 survey of individuals in the STEM field, “only 8 percent [of non-binary or transgender respondents] reported that they were less open about their identity in personal contexts, compared to 29 percent reported that they were less open to their colleagues.” [3] This information points to the reality that many non-binary or transgender individuals do not find STEM an inclusive enough space to discuss their gender identity. Although gender discourse is becoming more normalized in popular media, this lack of inclusive space is a worldwide problem.

Having a team that is gender-balanced does not necessarily mean that the team is diverse. The experience of these people also matters as they may be treated differently or worse than their male or cis-gender counterparts. Thus, accomplishing group inclusivity requires both the presence of non-cis-gendered individuals and consideration of lived experiences.

Sexual orientation is also something that may impact a person's involvement and experience within STEM. Studies have found that “the study revealed that heterosexual men were 17% more likely to stay in STEM than their LGBQ male counterparts”, and studies have shown that “retention is lower for men who identify as LGBQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer), while LGBQ women are actually more likely to persist in STEM than their heterosexual peers.” [7] In large part, this is due to the discrimination and lack of community that LGBTQ+ people experience in STEM. This demonstrates that while sexual orientation should never matter when pursuing a degree or a job, it still does, due to discrimination and spaces that actively exclude these individuals.

Finally, it is important to consider racial diversity within STEM as racial minorities face various forms of discrimination within and outside of STEM. Studies show that “[r]acial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in [STEM] fields in the United States” [8].

While we did not explore this issue in our survey, it is clear from people's responses to our survey that one concern regarding participation in STEM is financial dependence. Team UAlberta believes that “[i]t is very important that science be accessible, and hence that competitions such as… [iGEM] be financially accessible to teams from all countries all over the world.” We would like to recognize that this is also a large consideration which greatly affects accessibility in STEM, and that financial stability interacts with intersecting systems of oppression, which makes expensive fields and competitions (such as iGEM) less accessible to different groups of people. We did not consider this in our survey or our recommendations but it is something interesting to consider.

Another issue that we did not explore but would like to discuss in the future is accessibility for iGEMers who are parents. Another iGEM team from Alberta brought this issue to our attention at aGEM, as it was not an issue that we had considered previously with our survey or inclusivity work. We did not have this in our survey, and did not feel we had the knowledge on how to improve accessibility for iGEMers who parent, but it is an issue to consider in the future.

All of these considerations are what lead us to conduct our survey, to see how iGEM measures up and provide recommendations for improvement so that we can become leaders in Inclusivity and Diversity in STEM

Survey Results

LGBTQ+ Issues

One of our key concerns this year was to learn about the LGBTQ+ experiences in iGEM. This was done as members on our team who are LGBTQ+ have felt as though iGEM is lacking in representation for our community. We wanted to see if this was a shared feeling among the LGBTQ+ iGEM community. We found that 63% of LGBTQ+ people in iGEM felt that there was not a strong LGBTQ+ representation in iGEM!

The reason this question is important is because iGEM is a community made up of and driven by young people, which strives for development and change. This means we have the opportunity to make a positive change in the STEM community and be the starting place for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in STEM. Please see the recommendations section to learn more about how to make iGEM more inclusive.

Gender Issues

We first decided to conduct this survey after reading the 2014 Paris Bettencourt team’s survey, which primarily focused on the number of women in iGEM and the positions that they held. Moreover, we decided to conduct this survey as female members of our own iGEM team and our friends on other teams reported instances of gender discrimination. We also had potential concerns over the number of women in iGEM, particularly in positions of power and authority. Thus, we believed it was important to explore issues of gender. We built on the survey conducted by Paris Bettencourt 2014, by expanding our definition of gender. We expanded the definition to include people of all gender identities, as gender is not a binary of male and female. We were particularly interested in the nuances of individual experiences in this regard.

, First of all, it is important to recognize that our survey had more responses from female-identifying people (65.17%) than non-female identifying people (34.83%). We reached out to several groups about this: we drew upon the experiences of our two female advisors, our own team members with multiple years of iGEM experience, and the experiences of other Canadian iGEMers. Ultimately, there was consensus that although our survey had more respondents who were female-identifying, we don’t think that this shows that iGEM is dominated by female-identifying people. Although this is a distinct possibility, this has not been the experience of the groups we consulted. Rather, we believe this data shows that this topic is of more interest to female-identifying iGEMers, and as a result they were more likely to complete the survey.

Our survey also shows that only 4.31% of our female respondents felt that they had experienced gender discrimination in iGEM. While our sample size is very small, we still think that this is a valuable statistic. This statistic demonstrates most of the female-identifying survey respondents are on teams that do not perpetuate the STEM stereotype of discriminating against and excluding female-identifying people. That being said, we do not want to ignore the experiences of these individuals, and as a result have still created recommendations for how iGEM teams can improve and be more inclusive for their female team members.

Finally, we wanted to look at female-identifying people and their positions on teams. We did this as research has shown that women are less likely to hold positions of authority or leadership in STEM fields, as discussed in the introduction. Naturally, then, there is a possibility that there would be an underrepresentation of female-identifying individuals in team lead or sub-team lead positions. However, according to our survey, this is not the case in iGEM. Our survey showed almost perfect division between female and non-female team leads and subteam leads. Our survey found that 27.19% of our respondents identified as female and as team leads, while 26.42% of respondents identified as non-female and as team leads.

Notably, however, this balance of distribution was not true in regards to supervisors. While 11 supervisors identified as female and 11 identified as non-female, for females that were only 9.48% of the female respondents, in comparison to 17.74% of non-female supervisors. This shows something that is known in STEM, that while women may be involved at the undergraduate level, but as women move up in education and authority they are less involved. It appears from our feedback that this is the same with iGEM.

In summary, our survey shows some pretty promising results for female-identifying people in iGEM. However, our sample size is very small and the majority of respondents were female-identifying individuals, which we believe speaks more to the interests of these individuals than to the actual composition of iGEM. Finally, you may be wondering about those who identified outside the gender binary. We had one person identify as genderqueer, one person identifies as gender fluid, and one person who identifies as non-binary. This is a mere 1.68% of the respondents in total. Notably, there were no transgender respondents. This lack of presence of people of non-cis identity falls in line with the experiences of our team members who have been part of iGEM for multiple years. This demonstrates that iGEM, and iGEM teams should work to become more inclusive for those who identify outside of the gender binary.

Race and Ethnicity

After learning about the discrimination that racial minorities face in STEM (written about in above), we decided to ask about race in our survey. However, from the responses, it is clear that many people that filled out our survey were confused with this question as some responded with their religion or nationality. When putting together our data from the survey, we assessed the majority of these responses to this question were ethnic identifications, and thus processed the information as such.

Our results show that the majority of respondents are caucasian (white), South Asian, and Latin American. From this data, it is clear based on the individuals who filled out our survey, that iGEM may still struggle with racial diversity, particularly in countries like Canada and the United States. Notably, there was only a single individual who identified as Black within the scope of the survey, and we think this may speak to a larger systemic issue in STEM.

This may speak to actual problems with racial diversity and inclusivity in iGEM (which aligns with our personal experiences in iGEM), but it is also indicative of a small sample size.

Recommendations

Improvements for LGBTQ+ Community

There are a few ways that iGEM can work to be more inclusive of LGBTQ+ people.

We believe discussion and communication is the first and most important step that needs to occur for meaningful change to occur. Our first recommendation is to have a panel during the iGEM breakout sessions at the iGEM Jamboree to discuss issues of LGBTQ+ inclusion, and ways to improve accessibility and inclusivity. At the very least, it would allow for more visibility and make LGBTQ+ iGEMers feel as though iGEM is a place that is open to discussing these topics and that this is a community for them. After all, just about 20% of the survey respondents identified as not exclusively straight. We even saw the need for this open forum for discussion through our survey: “it is extremely nice to see the open-mindedness and inclusiveness that went into this survey, in a way it already speaks for itself, and as a member of LGBTQ+ community, I certainly feel more welcome knowing that there is such support and care behind the iGEM title”.

The second way is for teams to ensure iGEM teams are safe and equitable spaces. Simply put, safe spaces are spaces in which “LGBTQ people don't have to think twice about whether they can show affection for their partners — and whether they can just be themselves” [9]. While safe spaces are often criticized as spaces only created to coddle millennials from reality, it is actually an important way to protect LGBTQ+ people in academic spaces where they could experience discrimination, harassment, or even physical harm. We do not live in a perfect world and a meaningful commitment to these changes undercuts barriers to entry onto teams in the first place. There are various resources on how to create a safe and equitable space online, and because every team is different, and teams should try to institute their own ways of going about actualizing this particular recommendation. However, some good ways to start making a safe space are by being open to difficult discussions, and focusing on making it clear during team orientation that there is a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination and homophobia. This can be as simple as discouraging certain potentially offensive “jokes”, and language and that all team members must be respectful of each others’ identities, without question. It is also important to make it clear that if people have genuine questions they should ask in a respectful manner to allow for learning to take place! We recognize that learning about other people is a continuous process, and questions are a good thing.

Finally, a really cool thing that some iGEM teams are already doing is walking in Pride parades with their entire team! This is a very fun way to show your teammates and the world that your iGEM team is inclusive of all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Improvements for Gender Inclusion

While our survey shows that there are more female than non-female identifying people in iGEM, we had a very small sample size. As our team believes that this does not align with our personal experiences, we do not think this is indicative of the composition of iGEM. As a result, we think it is still important to focus on recruiting more women. The first way to do this is to recruit from female-dominated fields and spaces, and ask and encourage women to apply to iGEM regardless of experience. After all, specific scientific lab experience is important in iGEM, but so is a general critical lens and passion to innovate within synthetic biology broadly. The second way is actually something that was suggested by one of our survey respondents! Make the applications into teams anonymous by removing people's names to eliminate bias. Both of these suggestions could also be applied to recruiting those who identify outside of the gender binary and individuals of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Finally, while it can be controversial having gender quotas, affirmative action can be a good way to make sure you have a gender-balanced team. Teams should also ensure that once these women and people who fall outside of the gender binary are recruited, they are actively encouraged to take on leadership roles.

The second way is by making safe spaces as elucidated above. This is a way that women and non-binary individuals can express their concerns about the way they are being treated on their team without fear of judgment or retribution.

Finally, it is important that teams do not dismiss women’s issues as unimportant or ignore women when they try to discuss issues they are experiencing on their teams. This is an important part of making safe spaces, but it is important that all teams keep it in mind every step of the way.

Inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities

Our survey shows that iGEM is dominated by caucasian people, which aligns with our team members’ personal experiences of iGEM demographics in North America. However, we do not think this is indicative of iGEM as a whole due to the fact that it is an international competition. That being said, we think there is room for improvement when including ethnic and racial minorities in iGEM teams in North America.

Similar to above, the first thing that can be done is to implement a safe space policy within your team. Racial and ethnic minorities still face oppression, discrimination and even physical violence within STEM fields, and to prevent this from happening safe spaces can be an effective way to prevent violence, microaggressions, discrimination, and oppression on iGEM teams. It is also important that these individuals are encouraged to take on leadership roles once they are on the team.

iGEM teams that are currently racially monolithic (particularly if all members are white) may consider utilizing different recruitment methods including affirmative action, actively encouraging people of color they know to apply for iGEM, and removing names of individuals from their applications to remove implicit bias.

Finally, it is important that teams around the world actively combat explicit racism on their teams by calling attention to instances of discrimination as well as having candid and inclusive conversations about how to stop this from happening in the future.

Room for improvement of the survey

Overall, we believe that this survey provides a good basis for learning about how to improve the iGEM community and for sparking conversation around inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility. We hope that the iGEM community will take our recommendations seriously. However, we recognize that there are various things that could be improved upon for this survey!

Sample size

This year, our team worked very hard to reach the most iGEMers we could with our survey. We put it on iGEM HQs collaborations site in June, directly messaged, contacted and emailed hundreds of teams, and made posts to our social media about it weekly. However, despite our best efforts, we lacked responses. Moreover, we lacked responses from various countries and many of our responses came from Canadian teams (most likely because we are most connected with them).

While we personally believe that we did all we could this year to promote our survey, we think to improve our responses we could work harder to speak to individual team members and connect with them on an individual level. This would be best because often times when we connected with a team the survey would not get passed on from whoever first read the message and it would just be filled out by that one person, so connecting with individuals would help manage that problem.

Notably, the small sample size and lack of responses from different countries may also speak to the fact that in some countries diversity and inclusivity is not a topic of discussion or seen as something important. Moreover, it could reveal deeper issues with inclusivity and diversity in different countries, as for some teams completing this survey becomes an issue of safety or is socially taboo. For example, in some countries, iGEMers could be socially or legally persecuted for identifying as LGBTQ+, which may limit people's desire to participate in this survey. It could also demonstrate a lack of connection between our team and teams in different counties.

Question wording and explanation

While we reviewed our survey extensively and had Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour, the Dean of Diversity at the University of Alberta, review our questions, we did receive feedback about how some of our questions were confusing and how we could improve them! So in the future, we plan to add in short descriptions for each question so make it very clear what we were asking for people’s opinions and input on!

Moreover, from viewing the responses, there seemed to be a lot of confusion over the question of race, which made this data very challenging to work with. We asked this question as we wanted to see how racially diverse iGEM is, and learn about those individuals’ experiences as often times different racial groups are marginalized in STEM, so while we recognize that race and categorizing people based on race is a social construct, it is still an important issue to consider. However, people seemed to be very confused over this question as some people answered with things like “Canadian” (which is a nationality not a race) and their religious group.

While we raised this question off of the work of Stats Canada, we believe that a better way to ask this question would be to ask about ethnicity and provide a very specific definition and example.

Tracking of individual responses

Finally, a big question we had from the start of this survey was how to make it applicable in different countries. iGEM is an international competition, meaning that some of our questions are particularly important in countries with neo-colonial practices and high amounts of migration. Notably, experiences of gender are different in different nations, and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people are different in different nations. In future years, we would like to develop a survey that can track responses from different countries while maintaining anonymity to protect the safety of all iGEMers who complete the survey.

That being said, we believe all of our recommendations are applicable in every country as there is always room to make spaces more inclusive and diverse.

Summary

After reviewing the results of our Inclusivity and Diversity Survey, we believe that conversations about the oppression of racial and ethnic minorities, women and gender minorities, and considerations about sexual orientation are still important and pertinent. We hope that our recommendations will be implemented by the teams that use them, as iGEM is a place of innovation and pushing the boundaries, making it the perfect place for progress in STEM. At the very least, we hope our survey encourages discussion.

Click here to open the survey!

References

[1] A. Dawn, “DiscoverE,” Facebook. [Online]. Available: https://www.facebook.com/pg/DiscoverEUofA/about/. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

[2] Catalyst: Workplaces That Work for Women, “Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): Quick Take”, Catalyst: Workplaces That Work for Women, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem/ [Accessed Sept. 20, 2019]

[3] L. Leatherman, “Science has to do better for its queer, trans, and non-binary scientists,” Massive Science, 31-Mar-2019. [Online]. Available: https://massivesci.com/articles/trans-visibility-science-queer-lgtbqia-transgender-inclusion/. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

[4] K. Wall, “The underrepresentation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and computer science) has attracted considerable attention, and many have wondered whether women are more likely than men to quit STEM programs at university. Using data from the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform (ELMLP), this study follows a cohort of students who enrolled in a STEM program in 2010 over a number of years, in order to see the extent to which women and men persist in and eventually graduate from STEM programs.,” Persistence and representation of women in STEM programs, 02-May-2019. [Online]. Available: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2019001/article/00006-eng.htm. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

[5] “Statistics,” Statistics | National Girls Collaborative Project. [Online]. Available: https://ngcproject.org/statistics. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

[6] 19 March 2019 0 Comments, “Why Are There Still Fewer Women in STEM?,” CBGA India, 18-Sep-2019. [Online]. Available: http://www.cbgaindia.org/blog/still-fewer-women-stem/. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

[7] K. LanginMar, E. PainSep, K. LanginSep, B. L. BenderlySep, and Y. MaoSep, “STEM is losing male LGBQ undergrads,” Science, 22-Mar-2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2018/03/stem-losing-male-lgbq-undergrads. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

[8] “People of Color in STEM: Home,” Research Guides. [Online]. Available: https://guides.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/STEM. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

[9] E. Crockett, “Safe spaces, explained,” Vox, 25-Aug-2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/5/11949258/safe-spaces-explained. [Accessed: 20-Oct-2019].

Team:UAlberta/Inclusivity