--- title: Female Engineers Are Using the Hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer description: Female engineers are using the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer to challenge gender stereotypes. canonical: https://time.com/3985124/ilooklikeanengineer-sexism-gender-engineer-social-media/ author: Helen Regan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-05T04:11:21.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:16.738Z og:title: #ILookLikeAnEngineer Challenges Gender Stereotypes og:description: Campaign aims to redefine “what an engineer should look like” og:url: https://time.com/3985124/ilooklikeanengineer-sexism-gender-engineer-social-media/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta4cb5af934dc4fd4/69885df18e06018324461b3f/isis-anchalee-engineer.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1357 og:image:height: 763 og:image:alt: Isis-Anchalee-engineer og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: #ILookLikeAnEngineer Challenges Gender Stereotypes twitter:description: Campaign aims to redefine “what an engineer should look like” twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta4cb5af934dc4fd4/69885df18e06018324461b3f/isis-anchalee-engineer.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Female Engineers Are Using the Hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer to Tear Down Gender Stereotypes > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ## Video: Cracking The Girl Code [Watch (HLS stream): Cracking The Girl Code](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/IUeOpvkH.m3u8) (3:07)  _Published 2014-07-31. A program is trying to address low employment rates of women in the technology industry by attacking the issue at its source: Education. 'Girls Who Code' teaches young women computer science, in order to reverse the decline of women in the field._ by [Helen Regan](https://time.com/author/helen-regan/) ## Helen Regan Aug 5, 2015 4:11 AM UTC  Courtesy of @isisAnchalee by [Helen Regan](https://time.com/author/helen-regan/) ## Helen Regan Aug 5, 2015 4:11 AM UTC After a photo of software engineer Isis Anchalee appeared on a recruiting ad for her employer OneLogin, she received numerous sexist comments online about female engineers (sadly, no surprises there). So the 22-year-old “self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd” and “anime lover” wrote a [blog post](https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/you-may-have-seen-my-face-on-bart-8b9561003e0f) to highlight the issues women in tech face. She said that most people in the industry are well intentioned “but genuinely blind to a lot of the crap that those who do not identify as male have to deal with.” Fed up with the negative and ignorant comments, Anchalee invited those who “do not fit the cookie-cutter mold” to help redefine “what an engineer should look like” under the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer. > [](https://twitter.com/isisAnchalee/status/628294846713757696) And a Twitter storm followed … > [](https://twitter.com/stubbornella/status/628409173563174912) > [](https://twitter.com/EricaJoy/status/628387591478378496) > [](https://twitter.com/Werner/status/628446318499749889) > [](https://twitter.com/daraoke/status/628625476051861504) > [](https://twitter.com/Jenry29/status/628766972336017410) > [](https://twitter.com/absolutspacegrl/status/628424410295242752) > [](https://twitter.com/lisariendeau/status/628382642640039936) Even astronaut [Scott Kelly,](http://time.com/space-nasa-scott-kelly-mission/) who is currently spending a year orbiting the earth on the International Space Station, got involved to show his support. > [](https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/628627295943561216) ## Transcript When I thought about coding I felt like nerd. Guy. Impossible. Isolated. Inaccessible. Boring. Not for me. It is sad that those are the words that I would associate with coding. Which is why I'm really happy that I had this opportunity to change such a stereotype mind. [ UNKNOWN ] Coding has always been really foreign, and it's, I've been told, I guess by male guys, like, oh Riya, you're going to be a doctor, like I guarantee you're not going to be a good coder. Someone said that to me before I started this program. And I told them well, I'm gonna prove you wrong. [ MUSIC ] In 2010 I was running for office and would visit schools. And would see 100 boys in a robotics lab and then one girl in the basement of the church at a school in Queens using a computer that was 10 years old. And as we're becoming more digitally engaged, and as technology has become more prestigious, we are pushing women out. And I wanted to do something about it, and that's why I started Girls Who Code. [ MUSIC ] In the back of my mind, I've always wanted to learn how to code, but for some reason like I was too scared. to code. Working in class of like 19 guys. So when I saw that it was like girls who code, I immediately like, this is what I wanted to do over the summer. So, Grace Hopper is responsible is for all of programming. That's woman. Coding is like learning how to read or write. It's being able to take an idea in your head and put it down and make it into. Into something real. There's very few subject where a girl can come in knowing nothing and when she leaves she can say I can solve this problem. I mean, that's empowering. You're creating your own puzzle using several puzzle pieces. And you try to put it together to create your own pattern. It requires a lot of creative thinking and a lot of, I guess, motivation. You know, you have to keep pushing forward. Like, right now we're working on a game. And we have been trying to get this the one button to work for the past half an hour. And once I figured out what, what went wrong and once I solved the problem, I was so happy and so excited that I could do this. And I could solve the problem. And I could make it better. [ MUSIC ] Computer sciences needs to disrupted because it's not just women. It's, you know, Latinos and African Americans and just all different kinds of people. People who like sports should be taking more computer science and, you know, and they're not. I think what Girls Who Code is trying to do is disrupt the way that computer science is taught. We ask all of our girls to build a project. And when I looked at what they wanted to build. They wanted to build an algorithm to help detect false positives in breast cancer. Testing. They wanted to build a product to help fight obesity because a family member was obese. I would love to be in [ UNKNOWN ] and I think Cody has the ability to change any surgeon operates in terms of prosthetics or transplant. I mean, these are the problems that they wanna solve and that's why it's so important because we don't even know what solutions. 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