On Aug. 1, Isis Wenger wrote a short essay for Medium about her experience as a working woman in the technology industry. Wenger is featured in an ad at her current job at OneLogin where she works as a full-stack engineer. The ad has gained attention both online and off, and not all of it has been good. Commenters online have attacked Wenger for her picture being "too sexy" and criticized the ad for just trying to attract women.
Wenger admits that she has no make up on and she didn’t brush her hair for the picture. In Wenger's post, she highlights some of the examples of systemic sexism that happens as a female in the industry, writing:
“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. To list just a couple personal experiences:
- I’ve had men throw dollar bills at me in a professional office (by an employee who works at that company, during work hours).
- I’ve had an engineer on salary at a boot camp message me to explicitly “be friends with benefits” while I was in the interview process at the school he worked for.
I would like to add that both men responsible for these unfavorable experiences are not bad people. They are both socially-accepted, “smart” and “normal” guys. This illustrates one of the industry’s deep underlying issues. There is a significant lack of empathy and insight towards recognizing that their “playful/harmless” behavior is responsible for making others inappropriately uncomfortable.”
Wenger notes that she is just one engineer and is not a representation of all women in her company; imagine that, not all women are the same!? Just like her male coworkers, she does not think the way she looks should factor into whether she “looks right for the job” or not. Instead, the emphasis should be put on how well she does her job and how much she cares for her team. At the end of the day, this is just an ad campaign and it is targeted at engineers. This is not intended to be marketed towards any specific gender —segregated thoughts like that continue to perpetuate sexist thought-patterns in this industry.
In her article, Wenger includes the following questions:
"Do you feel passionately about helping spread awareness about tech gender diversity?"
"Do you not fit the “cookie-cutter mold” of what people believe engineers 'should look like'?”
"If you answered yes to any of these questions I invite you to help spread the word and help us redefine 'what an engineer should look like'. #iLookLikeAnEngineer"
...which ultimately lead to the movement. I wish I could fist-bump you, Isis. YGG!
In response to her essay, other female engineers have been tweeting their impressive credentials with her hashtag, destroying stereotypes and showing how widespread and diverse the population of engineers really is.
