Women in Technology Flock to Twitter With #iLookLikeAnEngineer

Women in technology companies have made a stand on Twitter, embracing and sharing images of themselves with the hashtag #iLookLikeAnEngineer.

Females represent a slender share of the technology management marketplace and various companies, such as Ipsos, are making moves to increase their diversity.

The Twitter trend kicked off after an advert for a position at OneLogin, a security company in San Francisco, won the support of the community.

The advert showed an engineer at the company who was an actual lady. That lady, Isis Wenger, shared her experience on Twitter, Medium and in a statement on LinkedIn. Twitter posts from other women are shown throughout this article.

Just updated my Medium post! #iLookLikeAnEngineer pic.twitter.com/szMTCuRVu0

— Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) August 3, 2015

“Hi, my name is Isis. I’m a full-stack engineer at OneLogin. They asked me to be one of four others participating in a recruiting campaign that was hastily planned and executed in one day. I was not personally ready for the amount of attention that it has brought me,” she said.

“I didn’t want or ask for any of this attention, but if I can use this to put a spotlight on gender issues in tech I consider that to be at least one win.

“The reality is that most people are well intentioned but genuinely blind to a lot of the crap that those who do not identify as male have to deal with.”

I am one of six lead developers of the software behind a quarter of the internet and #ILookLikeAnEngineer. pic.twitter.com/sUaiRo9S0r

— Helen 侯-Sandí (@helenhousandi) August 4, 2015

Wenger said that she has had to put up with appalling and inappropriate behavior in the office, including a colleague throwing money at her and another sexually propositioning her.

She said that they are not bad people, but are part of an industry in which such behavior is the accepted norm.

“This industry’s culture fosters an unconscious lack of sensitivity towards those who do not fit a certain mould. I’m sure that every other women and non-male identifying person in this field has a long list of mild to extreme personal offences that they’ve just had to tolerate,” said Wenger.

“I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble, fired or ruin anyone’s life. I just want to make it clear that we are all humans, and there are certain patterns of behavior that no one should have to tolerate in a professional environment.”

i have undergrad & grad degrees in eecs from mit & have done machine learning research on asimo #iLookLikeAnEngineer pic.twitter.com/c5OxS5wB2F

— sailor mercury (@sailorhg) August 3, 2015

Getting women into the technology industry is a problem, but there are plenty of strong examples who have made their way through the glass ceiling and disrupted the balance of the sexes.

#ILookLikeAnEngineer. I work with databases and sometimes I go out and dance. pic.twitter.com/EpIWxWKRcd

— Nadia van Axel (@Salsanadia) August 5, 2015

Many of these women have followed the style of Wenger’s post with information about their own roles and places in the industry.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.