New Book Release: “Geek Girls,” Exploring Black Women in Tech

Why does the word “geek” still bring a male figure to mind? Why do men continue to outnumber women in the high-technology industry? Since 2014, a growing number of employment discrimination lawsuits have 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: Inequality and Opportunity in Silicon Valley by Dr. 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 and is available at Barnes and Noble, Walmart and Amazon as well as, where other books are sold.
 
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, who continued to be denied opportunities.

France Winddance Twine was born in Chicago and spent most of her early life on the Southside in a working-class community. She has taught at Duke University, the University of Washington in Seattle, and was a Visiting Distinguished Professor at The London School of Economics & Political Science.

Dr. Winddance Twine is currently a Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Twine, a leading scholar of social inequalities has published 70 books including 4 single-authored books.