Sadly, popular social media platforms are often used to cyberbully and harass women, minorities, and, well, everyone else. But it’s also proved to be an effective tool for digital activism, including successful campaigns like #BlackLivesMatter and the effort to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse.
This August, a new social media activism campaign on Twitter is challenging stereotypes of engineers. The STEM fields are often criticized for gender and racial gaps, and now underrepresented groups are going online to change perceptions.
Originally, the campaign was started by engineer Isis Wenger after she was featured in an ad for her company, OneLogin. Following the ad’s release in the Bay Area, Wenger was the victim of sexist attacks from trolls who told her she “didn’t look like an engineer.”
In response, Wenger posted a photo of herself holding a whiteboard with the #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag, and the movement spread across the Web overnight.
The hashtag campaign isn’t just a form of activism, it’s also a savvy social media marketing technique. Surveys show that 70% of social media users in North America follow local businesses online, and 74% of them use social media to help form opinions about brands. The women participating in the campaign, intentionally or not, could be helping their employers’ digital marketing strategies.
In Rochester, some high-profile names in the local business community are supporting the campaign. Xerox CEO Ursula Burns took to Twitter to show her support, while also highlighting other female engineers who work for the Rochester company. Monroe Community College President Anne Kress and other engineers in Rochester have posted pictures as well.
San Francisco web developer Michelle Glauser even launched a crowdfunding page to turn the hashtag campaign into a real-life ad campaign, and so far she’s already raised thousands of dollars.
“Highlighting all of the people from underrepresented groups in tech normalizes it,” said Glauser. “This is not a model. This is a person who knows how to do this stuff. It doesn’t make you any less of a real engineer because you don’t look like a stereotypical engineer.”
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