Transgender Awareness Month: Celebrating Individuals in STEM

November marks Transgender Awareness Month - a month that is more important than ever for transgender people in STEM fields. Transgender and gender non-conforming continue in a STEM major at a rate about 10% lower than cisgender peers.

Because there is a gap in data around transgender people in STEM fields, it’s unclear exactly how many transgender people are involved in STEM fields. However, what we do know is that transgender voices are present in STEM - and that more are needed.

To celebrate Transgender Awareness Month, Built By Girls sat down with two transgender STEM professionals to chat about their journeys in STEM, what their coming out experience looked like, and how they want to see STEM workplaces become more inclusive.

Bringing a Transgender Perspective to Healthcare

Delia Sosa is an aspiring doctor and college student, currently working towards their Doctor of Medicine. While Delia has always wanted to pursue a career in healthcare, they felt further connected to the field after coming out as non-binary in college.

“I think when things started to shift a little bit was in college. I had just come out as queer and was figuring out I was trans,” they recall. “I started to see a lot of the inequities that LGBTQIA+ people face in healthcare.”

Sosa made the decision to publicly come out as non-binary while pursuing their Masters Degree in Medicine. While they weren’t sure of the reaction they would get, their colleagues helped make it a safe experience. “It was an environment I didn’t expect to feel safe coming out in, but the people who were part of my program, even though they didn’t understand what it was like to be trans themselves, they really were so supportive,” Sosa shared with Built By Girls.

As someone who is in the early stages of their professional STEM journey, Sosa’s main challenge when transitioning was finding themself and their identity, while also navigating their education and career. “In medicine, there’s a lot of professionalism standards and those standards tend to be different for people who are part of marginalized groups, including trans people,” Sosa voices. “It can be difficult to navigate professionalism standards and transition at the same time.”

With conversations and policies about gender-affirming care plaguing the country, LGBTQ+ representation in healthcare is more important than ever, especially for queer patients. “Having more trans people in STEM and in medicine really allows for our experiences to be incorporated into the field and for more people to understand our experiences,” Sosa emphasizes. “Having more of us in STEM…helps tell our story just by us being there.

Sosa’s experiences show that there is still progress to be made in boosting inclusivity in STEM for trans professionals. However, another transgender woman’s experience shows that diversity and acceptance has also come a long way in STEM, even over the past decade.

Transitioning After Years of Working in STEM

Ginger Chien has been working in STEM for over 30 years. Currently, a Device Architect at AT&T, Chien graduated with her Masters degree in Electrical Engineering in 1985 and immediately started working professionally in tech. After feeling disconnected with her identity since childhood, Chien made the decision to transition about 12 years ago.

“I’ve been aware that I’ve been trans, or at least have had deep identity questions, since I was just a few years old,” Chien tells Built By Girls. “[My] first job assignment was an impossible place to even think about transitioning. Socially, it was just not even on the radar for me.”

For Chien, there were a few different factors that led her to transition a little over a decade ago. “What eventually shifted me was like a teeter totter,” she explains. “There is one set of forces pushing me away from transitioning and that is a lack of a crystal clear set of policies.”

Chien further explains that the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies that companies adopt can act as a supportive aspect for transgender and queer employees. However, not all companies interpret them the same; Chien personally knows people who have been fired from their workplace, even with similar DEI policies in place.

Even if transgender professionals don’t face employment termination, harassment is a significant fear. Half of transgender or gender non-conforming physicists have been harassed in their own departments, while one in three have been told to stay in the closet to protect their career. Of transgender people across professional fields, 75% have faced discrimination in the workplace.

Additionally, Chien explains that clearly understanding company policies is not as simple as asking a supervisor. “Even asking for clarity is exposing yourself to that entire risk,” she asserts.

However, Chien started to see new energy around inclusion and subsequently, more policies about diversity in the workplace. “What eventually started shifting me in that process was…discovering that there were some supportive policies,” she recalls.

She adds that the forces on the positive side of her metaphorical teeter totter led her to decide to transition when she did. “Age and the regret of missing life opportunities, the sadness of not being authentic…all of those things together eventually got me to the point of making that transition decision.”

At the time of Chien’s transition, there was a significant lack of trans and queer representation in STEM. “There [were] virtually no open[ly] LGBTQ+ people in my workplace at that time,” she shares. While LGBTQ+ representation has increased in STEM fields over the past decade, LGBTQ+ people are still 20% less represented in STEM fields than would be statistically expected based on population data.

Making STEM Fields Welcoming to Transgender People

Celebrating Transgender Awareness Month goes beyond just knowing that transgender people exist; it means learning about how to be an ally to trans people and thinking about how to make the spaces we live and work in more supportive of transgender people- including in STEM fields.

Sosa points out the lack of gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender and gender non-conforming people in STEM fields, which are particularly important in STEM workplaces. “There are so many STEM workplaces that don’t have [gender-neutral bathrooms] and it's really hard, especially if you’re going from patient to patient…and you just have to slip out really quickly and use the bathroom,” they assert.

Because of the fast-paced work environment in most STEM fields, as well as the brain power that goes into STEM-related work, the absence of gender-neutral bathrooms in the workplace is a significant problem for transgender employees. “If there are no gender-neutral bathrooms, there’s a whole lot of mental energy that’s just drained trying to figure out what bathroom to use,” Sosa stresses.

Sosa adds that there is a gap in transgender and intersex representation in medical research. “A lot of the medical literature that comes out focuses very much on sex and gender as a binary,” Sosa explains. “The reality is that both sex and gender are spectrums.”

Working with research that only reports on males and females poses significant limitations to understanding trans and queer communities in the context of scientific literature. To combat this, Sosa emphasizes the importance of redefining what it means to do representative research in the medical field. “Moving forward, [we need to be] looking at the standards that we have, in terms of collecting data, and starting to rethink how we can conduct research and collect information in a more inclusive way.”

Meanwhile, Chien points to a need for clear inclusivity policies and more efforts to integrate diversity and inclusion values into the workplace beyond what’s on paper. “It can’t be just DEI 101 repeated every single year…I believe that there has to be a 201 and a 301 and a 320 and a 400,” she expresses. “There is more to learn and there is more to experience and more skills to develop.”

She adds that the transition experience can be very emotional, and training about equity and inclusion should reflect that. “The emotional experience needs focus,” Chien asserts. “That’s where a lot of the experiential training could be significantly improved in every organization.”

To the Transgender Youth Aspiring to a STEM Career

In reminiscing on her experience coming out, some of the most memorable moments for Chien were her co-workers’ reactions after her transition. “One person [pulled me aside in the hallway and] said, ‘I like the new you better,’” she reflects. “There is that force of ‘I’m just getting really sad and depressed, and I need to transition.’ I felt it, but I didn’t know that other people were seeing it.”

It can be nerve wracking and even scary to aspire to a career in STEM as someone who may not see themselves in the field. However, in a Wired article, Shayle Matsuda emphasizes how important a diverse set of voices are in STEM: “science prides itself on objective analysis of the world, but identity drives what questions we ask, how we answer those questions, and how we interpret data.” STEM fields need more trans voices in STEM and there may be more role models out there than you think.

Sosa reminds young trans people not to lose sight of themselves in a STEM field. “[The] biggest thing is be yourself,” they state. “We are working in a system that was not built for people like us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find our place here.” For Sosa, finding mentors through academic literature and national transgender rights communities helped them see themself more in the field.

Chien further emphasizes the importance of knowing the resources available to you, especially for some of the hidden barriers to transitioning. “Learn some of your paths of recourse, just so you know,” Chien suggests. She explains that there are a range of legal, financial, and other resources available to trans and queer people, which can be helpful in overcoming barriers. “Understand those resources because that will give you some support as you look at the big picture of authenticity in general and coming out.”

As a final note, Chien shares one of her favorite quotes to live by, from the book Where Have all the Tigers Gone by Lynn Hall. “The quote is ‘we did not change as we grew older, we just became more clearly ourselves,’” Chien recites. “It’s a very anchoring and grounding statement because it takes a lot of the power away from others to decide who you are, and the only power they have is in their own perception,” she articulates.

While there are clear struggles to being transgender in STEM, there is also a lot of happiness that can come with it. Through their educational social media account, Sosa has found community and fulfillment. “I started connecting with other trans folks on social media [and] started connecting with intersex folks. I’ve met some amazing medical professionals who are advocating for our communities,” they express. “I’ve found a lot of joy in teaching people about our communities.”

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Hailey Dickinson (she/her) is a freelance writer for Built By Girls and has been writing for the publication since January 2023. She is a creator passionate about using writing and digital platforms to build community, make connections, and ignite positive social change. Outside of Built By Girls, she manages communications for organizations in the food education and community organizing sectors. She is a Communications Major at the University of Minnesota and will graduate in December 2023.