A Twitter hashtag that challenges race and gender stereotypes in the technology industry took off in San Francisco Tuesday, with dozens of engineers posting their photos to the social network alongside the hashtag #ilooklikeanengineer.
Software engineer Isis Anchalee kicked off the movement over the weekend when she called her fellow engineers to action to make a point about how diverse engineers can be.
In a personal essay published on Medium, Anchalee detailed the skepticism and sexism she faced after appearing in a recruiting ad for her employer, enterprise software company OneLogin. Among the negative feedback received were comments from people who questioned whether she was even an engineer because she didn’t fit the industry stereotype of a young, white or Asian male.