Gender and Science at TU Delft

Science is not above sexism. At least scientists and engineers are not. In June, Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt made sexist remarks about women being too distracting for laboratories. A social media backlash ensued. ‘#DistractinglySexy’ became a hot Twitter topic, with female engineers posting photos of themselves at work – in clean suits, hard hats or simply knee-deep in research.

In July, '#LookLikeAnEngineer' went viral after Isis Wenger, a software engineer in the US, was told she was 'too pretty' to be an engineer. A number of female scientists from Europe added their voices to both movements, highlighting the fact that women in science continue to face explicit and implicit biases every day. We spoke to organisations across Europe and researchers at TU Delft to get a picture of the situation.