LGBTIQ* Inclusion in German Academia: Examining the Impact of Invisibility on Legal Protection Against Discrimination

LGBTIQ* people and issues are barely visible in German academia, which indicates a lack of acceptance as well as heteronormative and discriminatory structures. This has a negative impact on the career paths, well-being and freedom from discrimination of LGBTIQ* academics and obstructs research into LGBTIQ* related social issues. In addition, LGBTIQ* students lack important role models. In order to systematically investigate this exploratory finding from practice and the literature more closely, we surveyed 26 German academic institutions regarding the visibility of this group of people. The dataset was evaluated using content analysis. We find that most institutions rate the visibility of LGBTIQ* academics as low. Based on these findings, we analyze how the limited visibility of LGBTIQ* academics affects their access to legal protection against discrimination.