Why do Asian American women tech workers mostly identify as gender tokens but not racial ones? I examine how organizational focus on gender inequality makes gender — but not race — salient for Asian American women. I also consider the ways how Asian American women are marked as white-adjacent and its implication in upholding high-tech’s white racial project.
Gender & Society 38(4): 586-617.
Doing Gender, Undoing Race: Token Processes for Women with Multiple Subordinate Identities
Privileged but not in Power: How Asian American Tech Workers use Racial Strategies to Deflect and Confront Race and Racism
Graduate Student Research Paper Award Winner of the ASA Section on Asia and Asian America.
Given the representation of Asian American tech workers, why are they not the center of more research on race in the high-tech industry? In this paper, I center Asian American tech workers as racial subjects and ask how they navigate this white-dominated industry. I find that Asian Americans use four racial strategies to deflect, or less commonly, confront race and racism. This paper is unusual in that it considers how the local geography of Silicon Valley shapes beliefs about Asian racial identity and compares the experiences of Asian Americans within the SF Bay Area to those living outside its rarefied space.
Is a computer science degree always a good bet? Not necessarily, if you’re a Hispanic (preferred term) computer science degree holder in Texas. My research on the school-to-job market transition for Hispanic computer scientists demonstrates that school prestige and location of university play a significant role in landing an elite job in the tech industry. Using data from an original survey, I examine the career trajectories of alumni at three public universities in Texas.
The Geography of Jobs: How Proximity to a Prestige Labor Market Shapes Opportunity for Computer Science Degree Holders
Using data from over 50 countries, Maria Charles and I find supporting evidence that despite women’s increasing levels of education and access to labor market does not correspond to greater entry into the information and technology sector.
Book chapter co-authored with Maria Charles in Cracking the Digital Ceiling: Women in Computing Around the World, 2019; eds Carol Frieze and Jeria L. Quesenberry.