Women in High Tech: Negotiating the Experience of Being Outnumbered

• In Event: 560 - Regular Session. Race and Gender in the Professions

Abstract

This research utilizes ethnographic methods to understand the experiences of women engineers in Silicon Valley, the world’s leading high tech hub. While the high tech companies have become more firmly entrenched in our economy, the gender imbalances are stark. Men occupy at least 8 out of 10 engineering jobs. For this project, I interview the women in those positions (e.g., software engineers and programmers) to understand what the dynamics of numbers and the day-to-day experiences for high tech women most outnumbered by men. Questions include: What norms are created, contested, and navigated by women in today’s male-dominated workplace? In the past 30 years, sociologists have offered an impressive language for thinking about gendered structures and inequalities in the workplace. Yet there are remarkably few ethnographic studies that offer insight into the on-the-ground experiences of women in high tech, and none where data were collected since 2000, when the first dot-com boom went bust. My research addresses this particular gap in the literature. The high tech companies represent some of today’s most desirable workplaces, complete with lucrative salaries and elaborate employee perks. As such, these technology firms thus represent an important site for exploring the dynamics of severe gender imbalances.

Author

• Chris Caldeira, University of California-Davis