The APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics endorsed this section (December 2022).
Recommendations for supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion are distributed throughout all sections of the EP3 guide. This section addresses equity, diversity, and inclusion in a systematic and comprehensive way and as ends in themselves, rather than as means of achieving other departmental goals. Diversity encompasses recruiting people from
Marginalized Groups
People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.
into your department and retaining them, so that all levels of physics are representative of the range of people who could be physicists. Inclusion involves creating an environment that supports everyone in feeling welcome in your department. Equity encompasses ensuring that everyone has what they need to thrive in your department, which requires taking into account the ways that some groups of people have been and continue to be marginalized in society and in physics. In an unjust society, achieving equity (everyone gets what they need) requires more than a focus on equality (everyone gets the same). Achieving equity requires recognizing and challenging the structural and cultural barriers to full participation in physics and in your department that people from marginalized groups face. This section foregrounds equity as the most important goal, over diversity and inclusion, which are necessary but insufficient for equity. A focus on diversity can help recruit people from marginalized groups into your department but does not ensure that they feel welcome, while a focus on inclusion can help integrate people from marginalized groups into your existing departmental culture but does not ensure that they have equal power and ownership of that culture. This section focuses on practices that make your department more equitable for members of marginalized groups in physics. For guidance on improving the culture and climate for all members of your department, see the section on Departmental Culture and Climate. While the overall focus of EP3 is on undergraduate programs, issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in one part of your program impact all parts of your program. The recommendations in this section are correspondingly broad and apply to faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdocs.
People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.
People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.
. This section provides definitions of many equity-related terms, which you can see by hovering over underlined terms.
Benefits
Engaging in effective practices to support equity, diversity, and inclusion will enable members of
Marginalized Groups
People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.
to fully participate and thrive in physics, which is good for people from marginalized groups, for the field of physics, and for your department or program. It will also set positive expectations for the discipline and communicate positive messages to students about who can be a physicist and what kinds of ideas are included in physics. Physics is one of the least diverse STEM disciplines, and it has been well documented that members of marginalized groups regularly face
Implicit Bias
Unconscious and automatic attitudes or stereotypes about groups of people that impact one’s understanding of, actions toward, and decisions regarding individual members of such groups. For example, research shows that many people in the US, even those who consciously believe that all people are equal, implicitly have biases associating Black people with criminality and Asian people with being foreign, and not associating women with science. Implicit bias has measurable consequences in the world, with research demonstrating, for example, that people rate job applicants with names typically associated with women and/or people of color as less qualified than those with names typically associated with white men, and that students rate female instructors as less competent than male instructors. Everyone has implicit biases, and countering such biases requires explicit training and/or intervention strategies such as intergroup contact, perspective-taking, and exposure to counter-stereotypical exemplars. Review article
,
Microaggressions
“The everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.” Microaggressions often appear small to, or go unnoticed by, observers and perpetrators, but because people from marginalized groups experience them so regularly, they can lead to psychological stress and exhaustion for those who experience them. Examples include complimenting an Asian-American person for their English, questioning a Black person entering a research lab about whether they are supposed to be there, and telling a female physicist that she doesn’t look like a physicist. Definition from D. W. Sue.
, and harassment within the physics community, leading to lower rates of admission, hiring, satisfaction, and retention in physics at all levels. The main argument for working toward equity, diversity, and inclusion is a moral one: Ensuring that people from marginalized groups can thrive in physics and in your department is the right thing to do and is a benefit for its own sake. There are also utilitarian arguments for how equity, diversity, and inclusion benefit your department, your institution, and physics as a whole: As the nation’s population becomes more and more diverse, physics departments must become equitable and inclusive places for traditionally underrepresented students in order to respond to institutional calls for greater diversity and recruit enough majors to stay viable. On a broader level, a more diverse group of physicists will make the field more vibrant and better able to identify, take on, and solve the ever more diverse and complex set of problems facing the world. However, while utilitarian arguments may be more comfortable for members of privileged groups, such arguments can be harmful to members of marginalized groups. Research demonstrates, for example, that
Black
A person or people of African ancestry. We use this term, rather than African American, because it is becoming the preferred term, and to be more inclusive of people who can’t trace their lineage to a specific country in Africa and/or those who are not American. We capitalize this term to acknowledge that it represents certain shared experiences, rather than just a race or skin color.
students are more comfortable and more successful in institutions that prioritize moral over utilitarian arguments for working towards equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Effective Practices
Educate yourself and your department members (faculty, students, staff, and postdocs) about equity, diversity, and inclusion
Analyze the current state of affairs for marginalized groups in your department
Create, publicize, implement, and assess an action plan for equity, diversity, and inclusion
Pay separate attention to the particular needs and concerns of different groups and individuals
Use known strategies to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion
Programmatic Assessments
The Cycle of Reflection and Action
Where are you and what are you trying to accomplish?
Who should be involved?
What will you do?
How did it go and what comes next?
To be intentional about change, a department must have a clear understanding of its present situation and a vision for what it would like to become. Our cycle of self-reflection questions will help your department start conversations and structure thinking about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.
The Cycle of Reflection and Action will help you put the EP3 Guide to work for your department.
