Technology's Invisible Women: Black Geek Girls in Silicon Valley and the Failure of Diversity Initiatives

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intecritdivestud.1.1.0058
• Published date: 01 June 2018
• Date: 01 June 2018
• Pages: 58-79
• Author: France Winddance Twine
• Subject Matter: race,gender,diversity,elite labor markets,social capital,technology industry,Black professionals

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 1.1 June 2018

Technology’s Invisible Women:

Black Geek Girls in Silicon Valley and the Failure of

Diversity Initiatives

France Winddance Twine

University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

France Winddance Twine is a professor of sociology and a documentary filmmaker

at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a Black and Native American

ethnographer and critical race theorist, who has conducted research on both

sides of the Atlantic. Her research focuses upon the intersections of multiple

forms of social inequality (race/class/gender/sexuality). She is the author and

editor of more than 80 publications including 10 books. Her work has been pub-

lished in Race & Class, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Feminist Studies, and Gender

& Society and other journals. Her recent publications include Geographies of

Privilege (2013) and A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and

Racial Literacy (2010).

ABSTRACT

Black women comprise 1% of the Silicon Valley workforce. Between 2015 and 2018,

several major technology rms made “diversity pledges” yet these diversity initia-

tives have failed to produce any signicant increases in the number of Black women

in the technology industry. This article draws upon a qualitative study of 68 male and

female technology workers employed in the San Francisco Bay area. This qualitative

study contributes to gender studies, racial studies, organization studies and network

theory by providing an empirical case study of Black female technology workers in

Silicon Valley. It nds that although Black women bring a diverse range of social and

educational resources to the interview table in this industry, the use of social referrals

by technology rms operates against the stated goals of diversity initiatives, and that

the social referrals reproduce, rather than subvert the racial and gender disparities that

characterize the San Francisco industry.

KEYWORDS

race, gender, diversity, elite labor markets, social capital, technology industry, Black

professionals

technoloGy’s InvIsIble woMen 59

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 1.1 June 2018

People like to mentor people who look like them, and there’s nobody in tech who looks

like me . . .

—Erica Joy Baker, former Google employee and

co-founder of Project Include

I didn’t have many students who looked like me. I didn’t have a support system and I

didn’t know how to create one.

—Kimberly Bryant, CEO, Black Girls Code

There’s so much resistance to women and minorities in tech. For me to get the same

recognition as my peers . . . [b]eing good isn’t enough; you have to be exceptional.

—Shola Oyedele, a Nigerian-American engineer1

Diversity ideology has enabled many organizations to curtail deeper investigations into

the gender and racial ideologies that persist in the workplace.

—David Embrick

In February of 2015, Angelica Coleman, a 25-year-old Black woman, left her position at

Dropbox. She had been hired in 2013 as an administrative assistant. During her time at

Dropbox, she had taught herself to code Python and several languages through a “learn

to code” club that she launched. She understood that she would be able to move into

another role on the team that her administration job supported. This did not happen.

Negotiating a hostile work environment, Ms. Coleman found it increasingly difficult to

relate to her co-workers with whom she shared neither an ethnic, racial or class back-

ground. Describing her year at Dropbox, Coleman summarized it as “death by a thousand

cuts” (Chernikoff, 2015). In a Facebook posting, Ms. Coleman detailed the hostility that

she endured during her final months as one of only 11 Black employees in Dropbox’s

global workforce:

After spending months apologizing for being me, and after a White manager sat me

down, looked me in the eye and told me, “If you ever want to be anything other than

an admin, you need to go somewhere else” . . . Nobody can ever tell me what I can and

can’t do. I decide my own life, and if I want to code, then I’ll fucking do it. I left

Dropbox because, as a black woman, working on bettering myself, the tech industry

doesn’t give a shit. Even with the skills to do more, if I had stayed at Dropbox, I would

have always had the submissive role of serving others and never calling the shots.

Why? Because a White manager didn’t want to see me do it.

I begin with the case of Angelica Coleman because she represents a small cohort of

“invisible” women who barely register in the demographic data released by technology

firms. Although her case represents an example of blatant racism, and may not reflect

the technology industry as a whole, the statistics suggest that the technology culture has

not welcomed Black women. Dropbox denied that Angelica Coleman’s experience

reflected a pattern of blatant racism at their firm. And her case may be exceptional.

However, blogs, memoirs, essays by women in tech and journalistic reports based upon

interviews with Asian and White women in the San Francisco technology industry have