More than an engineer: Intersectional self-expressions in a hashtag activism campaign for engineering diversity

The feminist theory of intersectionality asserts that experiences of social categories, such as gender, vary based on context and demographic factors and can be best understood by capturing and analyzing participants’ self-expressions. Social media provide a novel setting to study this phenomenon. We examined participants’ self-expressions on a campaign for increasing engineering diversity (#ILookLikeanEngineer) and found that, consistent with an intersectionality perspective, in addition to their identity as an engineer, participants opted to: a) expand upon and provide specifics about their engineering identity; b) expressed their affiliation with an institution or company; c) expressed personal aspects of their identity such as family or hobbies; d) expressed support for someone they knew who was an engineer; e) expressed solidarity with other social causes related to diversity; and f) expressed enthusiasm for or mentioned the campaign humorously. This study highlights the inherent complexity of identify that arises when people self-express themselves.