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“Engineers Who Happen to be Gay:” Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Students’ Experiences in Engineering

Abstract

While much is known about the experiences of women and racial/ethnic minority students in engineering education, the experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identifying students remain unstudied. This paper breaks this silence with a study of the ways LGB students at a major research university in the Western US both experience and navigate the climate of their engineering college. We find that, because of pervasive anti-gay sentiments and dualistic thinking that often conflates homosexuality with technical incompetence, these students do not have access to the same opportunities of success as their heterosexual peers. Nevertheless, through coping strategies which require immense amounts of additional effort, LGB students bravely navigate this climate with tactics that include “passing” as heterosexual, “covering” or downplaying cultural characteristics associated with LGB identities, and garnering expertise that makes themselves indispensable to others. These additional work burdens are accompanied by academic and social isolation, often making engineering school a hostile place for LGB identifying students. Beyond breaking ground on an unstudied population, this research theorizes categories of inequality within engineering education, such as sexual identity, which often do not have visible markers and often require disclosure.

Introduction

The American Society of Engineering Education “Statement on Diversity” reads, “ASEE believes that regardless of gender, age, race, ethnic background, disability, or national origin all individuals must be provided with equality of opportunity to pursue and advance in engineering careers”.1; i While this is an important position statement, it is notably missing the human diversity dimension of “sexual orientation,” ii among other possibilities. Students who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) are enrolled in our engineering colleges, but what are the experiences of these students? Do they have equality of opportunity within American engineering schools?

Researchers have made impressive strides in understanding the experiences of women and racial/ethnic minority (REM) engineering students, exposing how cultural biases foster chilly climates which hinder the success of these students. But the issue of sexual orientation in engineering has yet to be even mentioned in social science literature. Indeed, the only publications the authors could locate related to this topic are two visionary articles on LGBT people in professional engineering, but neither are systematic studies. In the February 2005 issue of IEEE Spectrum, journalist Prachi Patel Predd interviewed a lesbian and a gay engineer and notes that the situation for LGB professional engineers may be improving in high tech companies. However, the engineers she interviews still face considerable anti-gay bias in the workplace and legally may be fired for being gay in many states within the US.2 More recently, Donna Riley’s 2008 article in Leadership and Management in Engineering, provides a primer on definitions of LGBT categories and issues facing LGBT persons in engineering workplaces, and

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Cech, E., & Waidzunas, T. (2009, June), “Engineers Who Happen To Be Gay”: Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Students’ Experiences In Engineering Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5583