While the STEM community continues to grow and slowly become inclusive, there’s still a stigma in the appearance of women in tech. Of course there are coding courses for girls and great programs for women active in the industry of STEM, but there’s still a long way to go! Discover how one woman ignited a movement behind a hashtag that is changing the face of women in tech below.
Isis Anchalee, an engineer in Northern California wrote an essay recently about how she sometimes felt like her work environment was toxic. “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,” she says in her essay on Medium. Isis says she’s faced weird sexist interactions at work including a male coworker throwing dollar bills at her and sexist backlash from a recruitment campaign with her face on it. The consensus seems to be that most of the men she works with are “nice” and “well intended” but that “this industry’s culture fosters an unconscious lack of sensitivity towards those who do not fit a certain mold.”
Isis wanted to challenge this mold so she put out a simple call to action to women in her field to post pictures of themselves on Twitter (and Instagram). The pics came in under the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer and show just a small sampling of the huge amount of diverse, beautiful and talented engineers that’s taking the world of STEM by storm! Way to go ladies!!!
