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It's not about being too subtle, it's about always falling into the same conceptual traps whenever male-dominated industries attempt to reach out to women.
I don't see they were over-dramatic. They posted mainly humourous and snarky comments about something that pissed them off a little : the same thing that has probably been pissing most of them off for many years - the constant assumption that female = interested primarily in beauty and fashion. They are the women at the coalface - they are the ones who've gone through a university education that was until quite recently unwelcoming of women (I've read about young women being catcalled by primarily male audiences whilst giving academic papers, or technical presentations, for example) and work in fields which still often favour their male colleagues as the 'serious' option for hiring, and routinely expect different things from women (such as offering different remuneration, funding levels and mentoring to a 'male' candidate than to a 'female' candidate when presented with identical resumes and research profiles).
When you look at some of the experiences of women in STEM fields, in which they are often assumed by visitors to be less senior than they are, and subject to comments about their looks and constant reminders by some male colleagues that they are different - the lazy stereotyping of women as primarily intrigued by matters relating to beauty and fashion might a) feel a little too on point and b) resonate with them as people who have far more insight into what might get girls and women interested in those subjects.
The campaign was a laudable attempt at redressing some of the imbalances but it was clumsy, inept and inadvertently feeding into, because it is informed by, the very stereotypes that are causing the problem in the first place.
Lots of people go on twitter to raise an issue, trend a hashtag, mock ineptness, have a laugh, or express frustration. You are dismissing these women as shrill and humourless, because they didn't just suck up the almost ubiquitous insults to women that underlie the tone of many of these campaigns, and give the company gold stars for a good effort. Because the tweets listed in that article are pretty good humoured for the most part. They are mainly jokes, a little snarky, but not particularly aggressive or nasty. As has become the norm, these days, the way to protest or disagree, or send a message is to make a funny tweet. There are some really fiery twitter storms - and this is not one of them. But hey - they are women rejecting and commenting on a misguided and not nearly well-enough researched campaign which yet again relies on the same old stereotypes - so obviously they are shrill and humourless.
Damn women eh? Keep shooting themselves in the foot by not accepting whatever progress gets thrown down from the top table without question. Keep undermining their cause by not smiling and saying thankyou and being generally gracious.
IBM are a big company. Campaigns like that go through many stages of design and approval. Is it too much to ask for someone in that chain to say - hey....you know what....this might actually play into the same lazy stereotypes about girls and science that has been so talked about lately, is it worth us maybe consulting with women in the industry to see what they think?
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