Sharla N. Alegria Sociologist

Sharla Alegria is an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her research is primarily concerned with understanding how inequalities, particularly those at the intersections of gender and race persist in institutions and organizations that reject discrimination and make commitments to equity. She focuses on scientific and technical workplaces, considering how inequality operates both in the organizations and in the technologies developed in these workplaces.

Her work connects technology, its applications, and the conditions in which it was developed to better understand the persistence of race and gender inequalities in technologies and the workplaces that produce them.

Research

Knowledge workers make the new technologies that shape the future but inequality and limited diversity among contributors threatens to embed the inequalities of the 20th century into 21st century technologies. My research examines how workplace policies, practices, and norms can advance more equitable futures. Key research findings show:

  • Women in tech take a “glass step-stool” to mid-level management positions without clear paths for advancement to the “C-Suite.” But this is only the case for white women.
  • Women of color more often only experience promotions for which they are specifically trained and eminently qualified.
  • Even when organizations prioritize pay equity, such as the U.S. federal government, sharp inequalities can re-emerge when we define equity too narrowly.

Selected Publications

  • Alegria, Sharla. 2019. “Escalator or Step Stool? Gendered Labor and Token Processes in Tech Work.” Gender & Society 33(5):722–45. doi: 10.1177/0891243219835737.
  • Smith-Doerr, Laurel, Sharla Alegria, Kaye Husbands Fealing, Debra Fitzpatrick, and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey. 2019. “Gender Pay Gaps in U.S. Federal Science Agencies: An Organizational Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 125(2):534–76. doi: 10.1086/705514.
  • Alegria, Sharla N. 2020. “What Do We Mean by Broadening Participation? Race, Inequality, and Diversity in Tech Work.” Sociology Compass 14(6):e12793. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12793.
  • Joyce, Kelly, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Sharla Alegria, Susan Bell, Taylor Cruz, Steve G. Hoffman, Safiya Umoja Noble, and Benjamin Shestakofsky. 2021. “Toward a Sociology of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for Research on Inequalities and Structural Change.” Socius 7:2378023121999581. doi: 10.1177/2378023121999581.
  • Smith-Doerr, Laurel, Sharla N. Alegria, and Timothy Sacco. 2017. “How Diversity Matters in the US Science and Engineering Workforce: A Critical Review Considering Integration in Teams, Fields, and Organizational Contexts.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 3(0):139–53. doi: 10.17351/ests2017.142.

Teaching

I teach classes related to Work and Occupations; Race, Class, and Gender; Inequality in the New Economy; and Research Methods (mostly Statistics). I strive for classes that are transformative–engaging students with ideas they did not know would capture their imaginations and open doors to unexamined aspects of the social world.

Classes

  • Work and Occupations
  • Introduction to Quantitative Research
  • Race, Gender, Class
  • Gender and Work
  • Gender and Inequality in the Knowledge Economy

More Resources

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