Ways to be an LGBTQIA+ Ally

Suggestions for Institutional Change to Support LGBTQIA+ People

1. Make existing support and policies known; make sure these are accessible and effective

2. Create (and fund) LGBTQIA+ dedicated spaces to foster connection among students, faculty, and staff, e.g., support or peer mentoring groups

3. Provide all-gender restrooms, e.g., single-occupancy restrooms do not need a male/female designation

4. Include LGBTQIA+ topics in ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and compensate people for supporting this work

5. Review and enhance official curricula, e.g., remove homophobic, heteronormative, gender essentialist content; provide clinical training on working with LGBTQIA+ patients

6. Provide official (and mandatory) trainings to educate around LGBTQIA+ topics, e.g., use of respectful language, ways to promoting active allyship, mentoring people from minoritized groups

7. Update institutional policies around hiring, salary, promotion, and retention, e.g., include minoritized individuals on hiring or promotion committees, provide funding for LGBTQIA+ researchers or scholarship

8. Provide insurance coverage for trans health care, e.g., hormones, gender confirming care

9. Provide a safe, anonymous means of reporting harassment or microaggressions

10. Consider an external consultant to review policies and make suggestions

There are many forms of support that an academic institution can provide for minoritized people. Yet, many people often do not know what their institution provided (Yoder & Mattheis, 2016). Enhancing knowledge and access to current institutional policy/procedure is an attainable first step.  

Creating LGBTQIA+ dedicated spaces to foster social connection (e.g., official affinity groups) is a potentially transformative step to creating support and community. Online communities (Unsay, 2020) and identity-focused support, peer mentoring, or professional development groups help build community for minoritized individuals (Campbell-Montalvo et al., 2022).

Institutional trainings and educations around LGBTQIA+ topics, use of respectful language, and promoting active allyship can help improve institutional climate at large. This can also help without putting the burden on LGBTQIA+ individuals to educate their peers. Having a supportive mentor and/or peer group, especially with a shared identity, can be transformative in facilitating success in academia (Sanchez et al., 2015). This also extends to enhancing official curricula, e.g., how to engage LGBTQIA+ people as research participants or patients (Fitterman-Harris et al., 2022), and confronting homophobic, heteronormative, gender essentialist content within curricula (BrckaLorenz et al., 2021).

Updating institutional policies around hiring, salary, promotion, and retention are critical to improving diversity and inclusion. For many institutions, extant efforts may consider, e.g., gender parity, without examining other minoritized identities. Again, this may take many forms, from assuring that hiring/promotion committees are not exclusive to those with privileged identities (e.g., cisgender, heterosexual, White, male) to providing funding for LGBTQIA+ scholarship, which is often undervalued (Sanchez et al., 2015). Revising institutional non-discrimination policies to include sexual orientation and gender identity–and making sure this available, known, and enforced–is a concrete step towards reduce negative behaviors.

In line with suggestions to improve gender equity (Ryan, 2022), institutions should focus on meaningful systemic change and holding leadership accountable to making this change, rather than meeting quotas or advancing individuals as token success stories. Encouraging faculty to come out is not effective if the climate is not accepting (Patridge et al., 2014). Many individuals often lamented “lip service” from their institution, i.e., giving appearance of inclusivity without making meaningful or financially-backed changes. True change may begin with needs assessments and/or hiring outside consultants to provide recommendations. Overall, making changes, without putting (unpaid) burden on individual LGBTQIA+ people, can be difficult but is essential to improve academic climate and repair the pipeline for LGBTQIA+ people in STEM. This work can leverage and build on existing guidance and efforts (Cross et al., 2020; Farrell et al., 2016; Farrell et al., 2018; Fisher, 2021; Freeman, 2020; Garvey et al., 2018; Guerra et al., 2016; Shane, 2022; Sinton et al., 2021; Unsay, 2020; Wallace & York, 2020; Wong, 2018; Yang et al., 2021).