Topic: Cracking the Bro Code (The MIT Press, April 9, 2024)
GATE’s Academic Director Sonia Kang sat down with Coleen Carrigan, Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, to discuss her new book “Cracking the Bro Code” (The MIT Press, April 9, 2024). Cracking the Bro Code is a bold ethnographic study of sexism and racism in contemporary computing cultures theorized through the analytical frame of the “Bro Code.”
Drawing from feminist anthropology and STS, Coleen spoke about the direct experiences of women, nonbinary individuals, and people of color, including her own experiences in tech, to show that computing has a serious cultural problem. From senior leaders in the field to undergraduates in their first year of college, participants consistently report how sexism and harassment manifest themselves in computing via values, norms, behaviors, evaluations, and policies. While other STEM fields are making strides in recruiting, retaining, and respecting women workers, computing fails year after year to do so.
Coleen shared with us why dominant racial and gender groups have preferential access to jobs in computing, and how feminist labor activism in computing culture can transform the field into a force that serves democracy and social justice.
“Those three elements, the fourth estate, tech defectors and tech persisters, if we come together, we can hold these big tech leaders and those who look like them accountable.” – Coleen Carrigan