Vivek Wadhwa is a business/entrepreneurship academic with appointments at Stanford, Duke University and the Singularity University. He writes books and articles about underrepresentation of women in the Technology industry. His book Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology was published in 2012.
Wadhwa's writing and other speech about women in technology have been criticised by geek feminists and women in technology. Criticisms include:
- Cate Huston: Tech’s Male ‘Feminists’ Aren’t Helping: "But on closer inspection, Wadhwa is still early in his journey to becoming a real ally. At a Bloomberg conference earlier this year, he referred to women in tech as “token floozies,” later attributing his misunderstanding of this derogatory slang to English being his second language. Wadhwa’s book is also the subject of controversy, as women in forums and on Twitter question why he published it. Was it because of his sincerity to support women or was it to build his personal brand?"
- Randi Harper: Google+ post "… the proceeds from this book go to "Singularity University", a for-profit non-accredited university with a board upon which the author resides. It's great when guys want to support feminism… But when then do it for personal gain, all goodwill is lost. I directed some criticism at this author on twitter. His response was to RT my tweets, not from his personal account (the target of my tweets), but the book's twitter account. This was an attempt to intimidate and silence me. When I told him that this intimidation attempt was nothing compared to the death/rape threats I usually got, he RT'ed that from his book's twitter account as well." (See also Harper's Amazon review of the book.)
- Ellen Chisa, Newsweek, Allies, and Critique
- Mary Trigiani on Wadhwa's "token floozies" remark
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