Software Company's Effort To Recruit Women, Minorities Sparks Unexpected Reaction On Social Media
By Melony Roy
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Female engineers, coders, and other tech heavyweights have joined a Twitter campaign to break down stereotypes about what engineers should look like.
According to analytics firm Topsy, more than 73,000 people used the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer to post photos of themselves and promote diversity in technology.
But Drexel University's Dr. Amy Slaton says there's a downside to this movement.
"It can appear to be a solution when it really is just one move among many more that we need," she says.
Isis Wenger started ilooklikeanengineer.com to encourage women to share their stories and help redefine the expectations of what an engineer looks like.
"As excited as I was to see this happening, and women with very different kinds of styles, ages and sexuality celebrating their presence in STEM fields, they're still a tiny, tiny property of the people who are educated, employed and get promoted in these fields," Slaton says.
Wenger wrote in a personal essay posted to Medium, some people questioned whether she was an engineer after she appeared in a recruiting ad for her employer because she was not a white or Asian male.
"I'm afraid what happens is it looks like we don't have a problem anymore," she says, "because we revealed the hidden women or the hidden people of color or the hidden gay engineers."
For real change to occur, Slaton says more money needs to be funneled into inner city schools and affordable state colleges.
"You can just add women and stir, or disabled people and stir," she says," that's a very corporate attitude of diversity that doesn't really change the attitudes in workplaces"