Setting the career compass for transgender and nonbinary scientists

As nonbinary doctoral student Andrea Paqis ponders their next move after graduation, they feel drawn to academia. While the end of a PhD program is often a pivotal moment for any researcher choosing between academia and industry or other paths, for nonbinary students such as Paqis, the decision comes with additional considerations.

“There’s some beauty that I find here that I don’t find anywhere else,” they say of their research on gravitational waves they are conducting in Orsay, France. As they debate which postdoc positions will offer the computational resources their research demands, they are also weighing their own personal needs. “I’m looking to find places where I feel good and can express and find myself,” they say. It’s “an additional variable that you have to look for” as a nonbinary scientist.

Career mobility is almost a professional expectation in science, particularly in academia. Moving between jobs and locations can accelerate innovation, broaden networks, and provide access to different research tools and facilities. It also presents unique challenges for transgender and nonbinary people: Legal protections and health-care access are available only in certain countries and regions. The pressure to move can mean leaving behind family and community. And the freedom to leave when a job is no longer fulfilling—or becomes unwelcoming—is difficult when fewer job opportunities exist.

A lot of people leave academia because they want to have stability in their lives and in their community, says trans social psychologist Quinnehtukqut McLamore, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. For trans and nonbinary scientists, they say, “it’s the same fundamental stresses: the risk of losing community for a job. But it’s multiplied because there’s no guarantee you’ll find another one.” Career mobility was a major theme across the career experiences of more than 200 trans scientists surveyed in the US and UK in 2024 by McLamore and their coauthors.

“A scientist’s ability to pursue physics should not depend on whether they can safely live, work, travel, and access care in the places where opportunities arise,” says Erika E. A. Brown, the director of inclusion and collaboration at the American Physical Society (APS). Retaining scientific talent includes supporting the careers of trans and nonbinary scientists, she says.

“The fraction of LGBTQ students is now a lot bigger than it was,” says Tim Atherton, who is the chair of physics and astronomy at Tufts University and has conducted research on the workplace climate for LGBTQ+ physicists. “I think many people in physics actually really want to support everybody.”

Navigating the policy landscape

Legal protections vary by region for trans and nonbinary people. Most existing protections for LGBTQ+ people are centered in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia, according to maps by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association . Gender identity is a protected group for employment in 46 countries , and processes for individuals to legally change their name and gender marker are offered in 23 countries .

New laws and court decisions have been shifting the landscape rapidly. In the US, the number of anti-trans bills under consideration at the state and federal levels increased more than sixfold between 2021 and 2025, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker .

Cold-atom physicist Mal Landru is taking these policies into consideration as they map out their next move. A nonbinary transmasculine PhD student at the University of Paris–Saclay, Landru plans to apply to postdocs in France, Italy, and the UK. “I had a wonderful experience as a master’s student in the UK,” they say. “I had the courage to tell people that I was going by they/them, and it took a few days, but everyone at the end respected that.”

The discriminatory gender laws in the UK aren’t deterring them from imagining a future there, Landru says. Although England, Scotland, and Wales now require people to use bathrooms based on assigned sex at birth, they say people are pushing back at the university level by installing gender-neutral bathrooms. But they don’t feel that way everywhere: “I feel like it’s very prestigious to do a postdoc in the USA, frankly, and I don’t really feel like going there with all the policies and visa rules related to gender change.”

Some people in the US are moving from one state to another—or are leaving the country entirely—to find better environments.

Nonbinary astronomer Winter Parts, at the Pennsylvania State University, notes that they will apply for jobs overseas after getting their PhD. (Parts uses they and it pronouns.) “I’ve felt very afraid with the way things are going in the US,” it says. They say they were shocked at the suddenness of the new law in Kansas that went into effect in February requiring a person’s driver’s license to list their assigned sex at birth.

As an exoplanet researcher, Parts plans to pivot to work in climate change and is flexible about what sector it ends up in. But one thing it was certain on is leaving the country: “I’m trying to get out of the US after graduating.”

Trans physicist Michael C. Holcomb found a noticeably better environment after making a move to a new state in the US. A tenured professor at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, until this past summer, she had become increasingly frustrated and dismayed by the Texas Tech University system’s policies and its reverberating effect on campus culture. Angelo State had issued contradictory verbal guidance in fall 2025 on what faculty could say or do when speaking and teaching about gender. Then, in a series of memos starting in late 2025, the broader university system prohibited instructors from acknowledging “the existence of more than two genders.”

Those changes are why Holcomb chose to relocate to California, where she now teaches physics at Northeastern University’s Oakland campus. She noticed the difference immediately: More colleagues asked her for her pronouns in her first week there than during her seven years at Angelo State.

Considering health and community

Health-care systems vary widely from country to country, but for trans and nonbinary people, the differences are even more pronounced when it comes to accessing medical care.

“The key for me here was access to healthcare,” wrote a UK respondent in the 2024 survey when asked about whether being trans affected their job hunt. The respondent explained that pursuing international career opportunities while maintaining continuation of health care wasn’t possible.

Having good health care can be a constraint on moving for a job, McLamore says. “Once you found a good one, you couldn’t leave even if the job started to suck or you got a better offer somewhere else.”

“If you have an issue, which doctor can you see? You’re probably going to have to go through a support group to find trans-aware doctors on that issue,” Paqis says. “I think moving as a trans person can be pretty hard.”

Paqis separates their nonbinary identity from their scientific life and finds community and belonging through activism. “I don’t want to move countries very often. If I’m going to settle, for example, in a lab, I want to stay there for a couple of years, because if I’m going to invest myself in the whole local support and activism, basically, I want to make it count.”

Taking career mobility into account is another important step in understanding the employment experiences of trans and nonbinary people, McLamore says. When looking at “the pipeline for trans and nonbinary people in science, it would be inappropriate to call it leaky,” they say. “It’s more as if somebody picked up a shotgun and perforated the pipeline with multiple blasts of buckshot. That is what the pipeline looks like as far as retention.”

Finding the lighthouses

While each job seeker will look for something different, trans and nonbinary scientists shared a few things they look for when considering new job opportunities. Universities that have LGBTQ+ centers, which support peer networks and resources, are one important pillar. Lab websites and email signatures that list pronouns are another valuable marker.

Trans and nonbinary scientists also reach out to people at a prospective university or company so they can take the temperature on the inclusivity of the culture. Researching the employer and their past history is crucial, McLamore says. “You should vet the institution carefully and look how they respond when they come under fire. There are some institutions where it is evidenced they will defend you, and there are some where it is demonstrated in a court of law that they have not,” they say.

APS is readying its next LGBTQ+ climate survey, which may touch on themes of career mobility, according to Brown. The survey would be the first follow-up since the initial survey in 2016 and is expected in the next few months. (The group has applied for funding from the American Institute of Physics.) The new survey “could help identify how location, policy environments, health-care access, and moves affect career decisions, and what kinds of support people have found useful,” Brown says. “We would welcome input on these questions as the research team refines the study.”

The survey will explore how institutions can mentor faculty to provide support for LGBTQ+ scientists, says Atherton, who is on the team creating the survey. Atherton says that support is important for the longevity of the field. “There’s very good reasons why you want to be inclusive of a wide variety of people in the scientific enterprise, because at the end of the day, all hands on deck makes for better science,” he says.