It all started with an ad campaign a few days ago for San Francisco-based tech company One Login . Twenty two year old Isis Anchalee Wenger was featured in one of the ads, as an actual engineer for the company:
Wenger got mixed responses, and a lot of attention, more than the other employees who were chosen to do the recruitment ads too, displaying on Bart.
Some questioned whether Wenger was a hired model vs a real engineer working at the company. And whether she looked like an engineer. Comments such as:
This is some weird haphazard branding. I think they want to appeal to women, but are probably just appealing to dudes. Perhaps that’s the intention all along. But I’m curious people with brains find this quote remotely plausible if women in particular buy this image of what a female software engineer looks like. Idk. Weird.
And so begins the hashtag #ilooklikeanengineer!
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
– “You May Have Seen My Face on BART“
And the female engineers have responded, posting their picts and sending in their messages of also not fitting the “cookie-cutter mold” of what people think engineers look like.
I have another photo to share for #ILookLikeAnEngineer. Every single woman in this photo is a software engineer.
Check out a compilation of more #ilooklikeanengineer shares on the BuzzFeed article here: Women Challenge Gender Stereotypes With #ILookLikeAnEngineer
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