After receiving derogatory comments about her appearance, an American engineer wants to advance women in new technologies through a hashtag on Twitter, #ILookLikeAnEngineer.
Isis Wenger is an engineer like others. There are some months she agreed to participate in a promotional campaign for his business, OneLogin, displayed in public transport in San Francisco. The latter wished to highlight its employees and why they enjoy their work. Isis Wenger posed alongside several of his colleagues, one of whom chose to pose with a top hat and sunglasses. Yet it is the photo of the young woman who drew the attention of social networks. “I think they are trying to attract women, but this pub attracts mostly men,” for example, a user commented. “Who can really believe that an engineer like that?”. Another expressed surprise that Wenger Isis chose “sexy way to smile.” Some have suspected of being an actress hired to give a better picture of OneLogin.
“I was told that I did not have good head, or that I did not look like a real engineer “says the young woman in a post on the Medium site. “It was by no means depict a portrait of the typical engineer. It’s just me, the example of an engineer in my company. “Before OneLogin, other new technology companies have launched similar advertising campaigns highlighting their employees. Dice, an online recruitment platform, was illustrated in January by staging engineers and developers in shorts. “I find it crazy that my smiling face, my shirt, my hair and my evil brushed discreet makeup are more controversial than this kind of advertising, simply because I’m a woman,” says Isis Wenger, who concludes his post by a picture of her holding a sign. “I help to build software for businesses, #ILookLikeAnEngineer (” I look like an engineer ‘).’
Since the publication of this blog post Monday night attended the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer more than 12,780 tweets. Many Internet users, mostly engineers, have expressed support for Wenger Isis by posting photos of them. The hashtag meet as black men or others who feel not fit the stereotype of the typical engineer. “The hashtag is deliberately inclusive because there are no limits to diversity,” said Wenger Isis on Twitter.
“# JeRessembleÀUneIngénieure who needs sleep. No need to place you my CV, I do not need your approval to be an engineer. “
” All the women in this picture are software engineers. ”
“Some examples of engineers at MIT …”
With this campaign, Isis Wenger joined other women publicly protesting against the lack of diversity and sexist culture prevailing in new technologies, as Tracy Chou, an engineer at Pinterest, or Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit, who sued a famous venture capital funds in Silicon Valley sex discrimination. Large companies now recognize the problem, but hardly find a solution: at Google, for example, 18% of engineers are women. According to a study conducted over several years by a researcher from the University of Wisconsin, about 40% of women engineers in the United States end up leaving the area.
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