STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) departments remain some of the most abusive, inequitable, and inaccessible workplaces within academia. Rates of bullying are higher in STEM academia than other environments, and when complaints of abuse or harassment against underrepresented workers do occur, they are often mishandled or not taken seriously.

For people who make it to the highest levels of the academic labor market, the prospects are no more promising. At the top fifty research universities, women hold only 31 percent of tenure-track STEM faculty positions, a figure that plummets to less than 2 percent for women of color. Those who do hold faculty positions are often burdened with time-consuming communal responsibilities and are more likely to leave academia than men.

At first glance, the growing trend of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committees and mental health awareness within STEM academia might signal that appealing to administrative channels and formal procedures would genuinely improve working conditions. Such a view is illusory. These measures are generally public-facing, top-down performances of neoliberal idealism, from which we as workers scarcely benefit.