In this episode of "Technically Human," I talk to Dr. Ethel Mickey about tech's "pipeline problem." We discuss STEM culture in universities, how inequality gets generated through a culture of networking, and Dr. Mickey walks me through the pipeline from campus culture to the tech workforce.

Dr. Ethel Mickey is a sociologist of gender, work, and organizations, with a focus on science & technology settings. She received her PhD from Northeastern University, and is currently a postdoc at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with the NSF-funded UMass ADVANCE program. Her research broadly explores the persistence of intersectional inequalities through relational dynamics including networks and collaborative teams, and she is currently working on a book manuscript on gendered and racialized networks in the tech sector. Her work has appeared in Gender & Society, and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and has been recognized by the American Sociological Association and Sociologists for Women in Society.

And this episode concludes season 5 of the Technically Human podcast. We’ll be on hiatus for the next few weeks. Please stay tuned, and join us for an exciting new season of the show when we return in the middle of July to bring you interviews with Silicon Valley writer Dan Lyons on satire, ethics, and tech culture, sociologist Dr. Anthony Hatch on biology, tech, and prisons, and many more exciting conversations. See you in July!

Podcast produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Podcast art by Desi Aleman.

Network Technology: Dr. Ethel Mickey explains how networks structure the tech workforce