Making Innovation Women's Work

Abstract

Chapter 7 argues that “tech” has a different connotative meaning in Los Angeles compared to Silicon Valley. Women who have been successful in LA’s VR scene narrate their careers throughout this chapter, illustrating how success “in tech” draws on expertise different than those hegemonically understood as central to tech work. Many of these women came to VR from television or film, observing that working in VR associated them with the prestige of “tech.” Unlike earlier moments in the history of both technology and entertainment, where a contraction of expertise limited the involvement of women, here definitions of expertise were allowed to expand with inclusion in mind. Facilitating this expansion of expertise was a recasting of storytelling as technological innovation. The skills needed to be a “woman in tech,” an identity many of these women proudly claimed, were capaciously understood in Los Angeles.