Burger King has stepped back and apologized after being murdered online for marketing its International Women’s Day initiative under the slogan “women belong in the kitchen.”
The fast food chain announced its scholarship program to support women in the restaurant industry.
The Burger King’s arm in the UK announced this with a tweet that simply said, “Women belong in the kitchen.”
“If they want to, of course,” he read in a later tweet. “However, only 20% of chefs are women. We have a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by training women employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career. ”
“We are proud to launch a new scholarship program that will help Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!”
The network also ran a full-page ad in the New York Times with the masculine phrase in large print, with a smaller text describing the details of the initiative and calling for a misrepresentation of women in leadership roles. catering industry.
“If there’s a professional kitchen, women belong in it,” the ad says.
The Burger King Foundation plans to award $ 25,000 each to two women employees to enroll in culinary studies with the Helping Equalize Restaurants Scholarship, according to its website.
The reaction was mixed, to say the least. Many commentators called for the deliberate use of sexist troops to get clicks and headlines. Others accused him of losing the mark.
“Surely this is not the day for that? Any day tbh. Attract media attention for being deliberately obtuse? Reinforcing stereotypes (even with an apparent good humor?) Is not good behavior or marketing, ”one critic said. he tweeted.
“How much are these ads worth than these scholarships?” another I was writing a Twitter user.
Criticism worsened when Burger King refused to heed the comments and shrank.
KFC Gaming he tweeted a meme in response to the initial tweet, suggesting that they remove it immediately. He He responded to Burger King’s account in the UK: “Why would we delete a tweet that drew attention to the lack of female representation in our industry? We thought I would participate as well?”
Finally, Burger King’s tweet was deleted Monday evening.
“We are sorry. We got our initial tweet wrong and sorry. ” a follow-up tweet read, with Burger King stating that his goal was to draw attention to the subject. “Next time we’ll do better.”
“We decided to delete the original tweet after our apologies. It was pointed out that there were abusive comments on the thread and we do not want to leave the space open for this, “the account added in a second tweet.
The note did not deal with the full-page newspaper ad. Burger King did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
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