Last night, I was fortunate enough to attend the BioCity Annual Lecture, given this year by Professor Molly Stevens of Imperial College London
Amongst many accolades, Professor Stevens has been recognised as one of the ‘Top 100 Young Innovators’ and ‘The Times Top 10 scientists under 40’. It was an inspiring evening for all in attendance, including many keen pupils from local schools and colleges.
However, one fears that the fact that Professor Stevens was also the first female scientist featured in Vogue might have caught the eye of the good folk over at IBM if yesterday’s #HackAHAirDryer saga is anything to go by.
To recap, IBM created a video some months ago aimed to “re-engineer misperceptions about women in tech, and to focus on what really matters in science”.
Not a bad idea on paper that but….these women working in science and tech were then asked to “hack a hair dryer”, then share their work on the IBM website.
Wow!
Things had actually been quiet on this campaign since it launched, gaining pretty much zero traction until yesterday when it started to get noticed by a number of scientists, many of them female and the vast majority, quite understandably, not positive.
Here’s a favourite of mine from rocket scientist Stephanie Evans. Speaking to the BBC, Evans goes on to say; ““The #HackAHairdryer campaign is a poorly designed attempt to inspire women to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers due to the fact that it reinforces gender stereotypes,”
“Getting women interested in STEM is as simple as making educational resources readily available for them to freely pursue their interests without being placed in a glittery, pink box.”
Wise words right there.
Quite what IBM was thinking when it began this campaign I do not know. I’m sure it wasn’t intended to offend but surely they would check this with their teams first, just in case. It looks painfully obvious that it will cause offence and actually harm the brand and the campaign itself to me but somehow they missed it. Worst still, it had all been forgotten about until some bright spark at IBM started pushing the video again.
The result on social media was instant, with over 5,000 mentions of #HackAHairdryer in a couple of hours.
IBM has since apologised and say the campaign will be discontinued. I’d argue the damage has already been done.
I resisted the urge to ask Professor Stevens about the furore last night during the Q&A she’s got bigger fish to fry, such as inspiring the next generation of young scientists (girls and boys) to grow bones in test tubes, rather than obsessing with hairdryers and “girly stuff”.