CONFLUENT IDENTITIES IN THE GEOSCIENCES

People with multiple marginalized identities have different experiences in STEM than people from cultural majority populations. These experiences influence individuals’ motivation to persist in geoscience academic programs and careers and can potentially bring new insights to systematic studies focused on supporting a more inclusive geoscience community. This presentation will discuss in detail the results to an open-ended question (157 respondents) on an anonymous survey focused on exploring how gender and sexual identity may affect an individual’s self-identification as a geoscientist (i.e., “geoscience identity”). Six major themes were identified in the responses: 1. Inequity, 2. Inequality, 3. Privilege, 4. Community climate, 5. Sense of Belonging, and 6. Geoscience Identity. Although not a comprehensive representation of the entire community, the results of this project imply that the geoscience community has several opportunities to improve how welcoming we are to new members of the geoscience community.