Women of Color Don’t Feel Safe in STEM Spaces — And Here’s Why That Matters

In a recent TechBridge meeting, every woman of color in the room — without exception — said she does not feel safe in STEM spaces unless someone of her race and sex is present.

It was our third meeting session for the STEM Equity Learning Community: Building STEM Identities Through Belonging & Practice Mindset, and the facilitator posed the question: How do we feel when we see someone who looks like us in a STEM space? In a Zoom room full of educators, founders, coordinators, administrators, and directors — all active people in STEM — some answered with: I feel heard, seen, relieved, a sense of freedom. But the response that kept repeating, in different words, was this: we all felt safe.

This lived response echoes what research has already shown. A longitudinal study in 2021 found that when STEM environments operate under a “fixed-ability” mindset, women — especially women of color — report higher perceptions of sexism and significantly lower sense of belonging. That exact dynamic was reflected in real time during this meeting.

With a response that strong in a group of about twenty, we can only imagine how many other women of color in STEM feel the same way in male-dominated, non-POC spaces.

When asked what patterns we saw in the responses, I pointed out the most obvious one on the worksheet: every single woman of color openly admitted — and agreed through head nods or Zoom reactions — that STEM does not feel safe without a familiar demographic counterpart present.

This aligns with a 2024 intersectional chemistry study showing that even highly skilled BIPOC women experience microaggressions, invisibility, and lack of recognition in STEM environments — all of which reinforce that feeling of being unsafe or “othered.”

This matters for a number of reasons. One of the biggest is the inability to fully present STEM ideas and initiatives without the fear of not being heard — or worse, the idea being pushed aside, leaving the underrepresented communities we serve without access to what that idea could have offered. It also leads to burnout, and even a quiet dimming of your own light just to get by, just to still have a place in those spaces. STEM culture is built on the illusion of neutrality. But neutrality disappears when no one in the room looks like you or understands your lived experience.

A 2024 “educational debts” study tracked inequities before students ever enter college STEM labs, showing that women of color begin their STEM pathways already carrying systemic disadvantages — meaning the culture they meet only compounds inequity. And even later, workforce data backs this: according to Pew, STEM job representation remains structurally skewed, proving that credentials alone cannot overcome hostile or exclusionary environments.

If women of color consistently report that STEM spaces lack psychological safety, then we don’t need more pipeline programs — we need programs that build safe spaces, community, and confidence before they ever enter those spaces.

This is the exact gap that organizations like STEM & Leaf and TechBridge Girls are built to fill — intentionally creating belonging-centered, culturally grounded, psychologically safe entry points into STEM that directly address the barriers the research has already confirmed.

References

Clark, S. L., Dyar, C., Inman, E. M., Maung, N., & London, B. (2021). Women’s career confidence in a fixed, sexist STEM environment. International Journal of STEM Education, 8(1). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40594-021-00313-z

Stephenson, N. S., & Abelsen, U. A. (2024). Recognition experiences of women of color in chemistry: An intersectional study. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 25, 1229-1250. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2024/rp/d3rp00278k

Fry, R., Kennedy, B., & Funk, C. (2021, April 1). STEM jobs see uneven progress in increasing gender, racial and ethnic diversity. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/

Van Dusen, B., Nissen, J., & Johnson, O. (2024). Society’s educational debts in biology, chemistry, and physics across race, gender, and class. arXiv preprint. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01314