An inside account of gender and racial discrimination in the high-tech industry
Why is being a computer “geek” still perceived to be a masculine occupation? Why do men continue to greatly outnumber women in the high-technology industry? Since 2014, a growing number of employment discrimination lawsuits has called attention to a persistent pattern of gender discrimination in the tech world. Much has been written about the industry’s failure to adequately address gender and racial inequalities, yet rarely have we gotten an intimate look inside these companies. 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. This work draws on close to a hundred interviews with male and female technology workers of diverse racial, ethnic, and educational backgrounds who are currently employed at tech firms such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and at various start-ups in the San Francisco Bay area. Geek Girls captures what it is like to work as a technically skilled woman in Silicon Valley.
Selected Publications
Dr. Twine is the author and editor of eleven books and numerous research articles.
A selection of her work is below. You can find a full list of her publications on her CV.
Lisa Parks and France Winddance Twine. “Millennial Messiahs, Female Fixers, and Corporate Boards: Workplace Power Dynamnics in Tech TV Dramas.” Film Quarterly. Vol. 76, No. 3 (2023): 25-35. University of California Press.
France Winddance Twine and Marcin Smietana. “The racial contours of queer reproduction.” The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and Reproduction (2021). [PDF]
France Winddance Twine. “Technology’s invisible women: Black geek girls in Silicon Valley and the failure of diversity initiatives.” International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies 1, no. 1 (2019): 58-79. [PDF]
France Winddance Twine. “Qeer Decisions: Racial Matching among Gay Male Intended Parents”, International Journal of Comparative Sociology , Vol. 63, Issue 4 (June 18) (2022). [PDF]
France Winddance Twine. “Visual ethnography and racial theory: Family photographs as archives of interracial intimacies.” Ethnic and racial studies 29, no. 3 (2006): 487-511. [PDF]
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Outsourcing the Womb
2015
Through case studies, this second edition provides a critical analysis and global tour of the international surrogacy landscape in Egypt, India, China, Japan, Israel, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States.
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Geographies of Privilege
2013, Co-edited
with Bradley GardenerCase studies demonstrate how power operates and is activated within local, national, and global networks. Twine and Gardener have put together a collection that analyzes how the centrality of spaces (domestic, institutional, leisure, educational) are central to the production, maintenance and transformation of inequalities.
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Girls With Guns
2013
A nuanced understanding of state violence and gender (in)equalities must consider the varied and contradictory experiences of armed civilian women, female soldiers, and opponents of gun possession. How is ‘feminism’ and ‘femininity’ negotiated in the early 21st century by civilian and military women in a nation that fetishizes guns?
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A White Side of Black Britain
2010
Explores the racial consciousness of white women who have established families and had children with black men of African Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom.
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Feminism and Anti-Racism
2001, Co-edited with Kathleen Blee
A collection of international scholars and activists answer the question: how does gender and region/nation play a defining role in how feminists engage in anti-racist practices?
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Racism in a Racial Democracy
1998
Twine asks why Brazilians, particularly Afro-Brazilians, continue to have faith in Brazil's "racial democracy" in the face of pervasive racism in all spheres of Brazilian life.