Geek Girls, France Winddance Twine
Geek Girls, France Winddance Twine
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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Geek Girls
Inequality and Opportunity in Silicon Valley

Author: France Winddance Twine

Narrator: Machelle Williams

Unabridged: 9 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/24/2022


Synopsis

In Geek Girls, France Winddance Twine provides the first book by a sociologist that "lifts the Silicon veil" to provide firsthand accounts of inequality and opportunity in the tech ecosystem.

With a sharp eye for detail and compelling testimonials from industry insiders, Twine shows how the technology industry remains rigged against women, and especially Black, Latinx, and Native American women from working class backgrounds. From recruitment and hiring practices, to social and educational segregation, to academic prestige hierarchies, Twine reveals how women are blocked from entering this industry.

Twine argues that closed social networks and routine hiring practices described by employees reinforce the status quo and reproduce inequality. The myth of meritocracy and gender stereotypes produce a culture where the use of race-, color-, and power-evasive language makes it difficult for individuals to name the micro-aggressions and forms of discrimination that they experience.

Twine offers concrete insights into how the technology industry can address ongoing racial and gender disparities, create more transparency, and empower women from underrepresented groups.

About France Winddance Twine

France Winddance Twine is professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author and a coeditor of ten books, including Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class and Gestational Surrogacy in a Global Market and A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ashley

I love the ideas in this book. However, the writing is extremely academic and challenging to read (more akin to a research paper). Rating this book was a challenge due to that disparity. The idea and importance are easily 5-star! However, while I found myself writing and journaling and thinking a lo......more

Goodreads review by Sarah

I was so excited to read this book, as a former academic who is a research director at a tech equity non-profit. The overall organization of this book was pretty scattered and I was hungry for nuance and more detail. It felt more like the author had a story she wanted to tell and used the data to te......more

I work in high tech and have been a female engineer in a male world for ages. I was really interested in this book but, even if it's well researched, it's so academic that I felt it very far from the reality and more like a paper. I will try again to read it. Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC,......more

Goodreads review by Alexa

Appreciated the intersectional perspective of gender, race, technology, and any other social dimensions that become involved. As a woman in tech, although not a strict software engineer nor in Silicon Valley, it was strange to reflect on my work situation and realize some similarities. I think this......more