When Isis Wenger agreed to become part of her company’s recruiting campaign, she did not expect to receive a lot of backlash from the internet. Some have questioned her image as a female engineer. Some expressed that this was the company’s attempt to capture male engineers’ attention. So, in an article she wrote in Medium, she inspired other engineers to help her campaign in spreading awareness in tech diversity:
“Do you feel passionately about helping spread awareness and increase tech diversity?
Do you not fit the “cookie-cutter mold” of what people believe engineers “should look like?”
If you answered yes to any of these questions I invite you to help spread the word and help us redefine “what an engineer should look like”.
#iLookLikeAnEngineer”
Source: Independent
As soon as word spread out, other female engineers have posted their own pictures with the hastag #ilooklikeanengineer. Her article generated thousands of responses, which led to a group of female engineers crowdfunding around $50,000 to put up billboards in Silicon Valley. These billboards aimed to end gender discrimination by showing that not all engineers are in the form of hoodie-wearing white guys.
Source: Fusion
The billboards were seen throughout San Francisco – targeted especially in places where people who work for tech companies take their commute on the way to work.
Given Silicon Valley’s reputation in having low diversity in its hiring, these billboards featured women and men of different colors and race – clearly not the type who fits into the stereotype. Despite the attempts made to spread awareness through these billboards, not much buzz was created in Twitter on the topic.
Really now? Can’t a girl look exactly the way she wants to look and still be an engineer? News flash: It’s 2016. Female engineers exist and we don’t have to look like Mark Zuckerberg.
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