THE SOCIAL IS PROFESSIONAL: THE EFFECTS OF TEAM CLIMATE ON PROFESSIONAL OUTCOMES FOR LGBTQ PERSONS IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Abstract

Following decades of research on gender and racial/ethnic inequality in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), a new line of scholarship has emerged that centers the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) persons in STEM. This research has tended to focus on experiences of social marginalization within STEM contexts such as exclusion and harassment, but LGBTQ persons may also face a myriad of career-related disadvantages that are likely tight-ly entwined with social marginalization. In this article we ask, do negative social dynamics in LGBTQ professionals’ work environments foster professional disadvantages by LGBTQ status? Drawing on survey data from an insightful case of environmental scientists working in academic teams, we find that LGBTQ scientists were less likely to experience professional respect, had more frequent encounters with negative authorship practices, and were less likely to experience positive career mentoring than their peers. LGBTQ scientists were less likely than cisgender-heterosexual scientists to experience positive interpersonal climates in their teams (in the form of procedural justice and inclusivity) and we find that these more negative team climate experiences significantly mediated (i.e., helped account for) LGBTQ status differences along two of the three professional outcomes (professional respect and authorship experiences). These findings underscore the importance of accounting for how negative social environments for LGBTQ STEM professionals can translate into negative professional outcomes. We end by discussing the implications of these results for LGBTQ inequality research and for advancing more equitable team contexts in STEM.