The #ILookLikeAnEngineer Hashtag Challenges Stereotypes On Twitter

A picture is worth 1,000 words

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It all started with a recruiting ad for a tech company, OneLogic, seen in transit stations in the San Fransisco area. It featured a woman in a black t-shirt and glasses against a white background, with a positive quote about the team she works with. Innocuous enough. But then people started commenting about the ad on social media. One Facebook user said: “But I’m curious that people with brains find this quote even plausible and if women in particular buy this image of what a female software engineer looks like.”

The woman in the ad, Isis Anchalee, doesn’t have to buy anything. She is a software engineer with the company that put up the ad. In a blog post about the experience she writes:

The post started a hashtag on Twitter, with people from around the world posting pictures to show what engineers look like.

There were engineers from NASA:

https://twitter.com/LeMoustier/status/628459049118498816//
https://twitter.com/absolutspacegrl/status/628424410295242752//

Engineers that make Holograms:

https://twitter.com/laurenjbissett/status/628346146314817536//

Engineers that have been doing this for a while:

https://twitter.com/marcosc/status/628367326572843009//

And engineering students just starting out:

Engineers that work for huge corporations:

https://twitter.com/nkkl/status/628340986037448704//

And prestigious universities:

https://twitter.com/JedidahIslerPhD/status/628408698944229376//

The hashtag is still going and gaining more incredible pictures all the time. The movement comes in the wake of other, similar Twitter hashtags, including #distractinglysexy in which female scientists posted pictures of themselves at work after Nobel prize winner Tim Hunt made sexist remarks to a room of science journalists.