Dr Alfredo Carpineti is a raging homosexual.

This was how he described himself at Out Thinkers, an event at this year’s Cambridge Science Festival. It’s a derogatory expression that dates back to a period of greater intolerance towards people of diverse sexual identities. But Alfredo is raging in a very different sense of the word.

“I’m raging because I see a lot of inequalities and challenges for LGBT people in STEM that are not being addressed,” he says.

Alfredo is Chair and co-founder of the organisation Pride in STEM, as well as an astrophysicist and a writer for the hugely popular IFLScience.com. He set up Pride in STEM to support scientists and engineers who define as LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or any other minority gender identity and sexual orientation).

Alfredo Carpineti Alfredo Carpineti

Speaking at the science festival, Alfredo quoted some startling – and somewhat depressing – statistics. Less than 60% of LGBT+ people in STEM are out. One in three US physicists has been advised to remain in the closet. Half of transgender or gender non-conforming people have been harassed in their department. Little wonder, then, that lesbian, gay and bisexual students are 10% less likely to enter a STEM career than their straight peers.

More recently, a survey of UK physical scientists found that 28% of LGBT+ respondents – and nearly half of all those who said they were trans – had at some point considered leaving their workplace because of the climate or discrimination towards LGBT+ people. There was some cause for optimism, however: the majority of all respondents (75%) reported that the working environment for LGBT+ physical scientists was comfortable and 70% said it was improving.

“If you aren’t raging, you haven’t been paying attention,” said Alfredo at the Science Festival. It’s time to stand up and take action.

Among the measures he would like to see put in place across institutions is awareness training in departments, not just for LGBT+ issues, but around diversity in general. “We need to make people realise that their own experience is not the only way the world can be experienced.”

There are some simple, practical measures, too, that he believes will make a difference. These include everyone giving their pronouns in talks and email signatures (mine are he/him/his, for example), and departments having gender-neutral toilets in their building and ensuring they work closely with their institution’s Equality & Diversity team.

“[Departments and institutions] shouldn’t deal with these issues as a reaction to something happening – they need to be proactive,” he says.

In 2018, Alfredo, alongside other organisations, launched LGBTSTEM Day, which takes place on 5 July. It’s a geeky in-joke: the date can be written as 507 – in nanometres this is the wavelength of the colour green featured in the rainbow flag (representing nature); in the US, it can be written as 705, which in nanometres is the wavelength of the colour red (representing life).

Just as pride marches around the world have helped make the LGBT+ community more visible, Alfredo hopes this annual event will help showcase the diversity within the STEM community, helping change attitudes and make it easier for LGBT+ colleagues to “be authentic” – to be who they want to be in both their personal and private lives, to be ‘out’.

“There’s a shortage of LGBT+ role models in STEM, and hopefully through LGBTSTEM Day we can show that there are LGBT+ people working in STEM and they are successful, that they are important and should be valued.”

