ABSTRACT
The employers interviewed indicated that they prefer to hire immigrant women, as compared to immigrant men, for assembly work because of beliefs shared by workers and employers alike that women can afford to work for less. This chapter examines predilection for basing hiring on gender on the “low-tech” side of hightech industry: manufacturing assembly work. It explores the factors that peg workers who are “small, foreign and female” in the lowest paid jobs—factors that are not quite as obvious as they might appear. Findings indicate that race, national origin, and gender have major significance in determining the class structure and division of labor of Silicon Valley’s high-tech industry. As the quote about job trainers’ racial hiring preferences at the beginning of this paper suggests, Silicon Valley employers and their colleagues distinguish not only between immigrants and nonimmigrants but also between different immigrant groups.
