On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the fast-food restaurant chain Burger King UK courted controversy after its tweet evoked criticism on the microblogging site because of its sexist undertone. In an attempt to market its culinary scholarship to garner women participation, Burger King UK tweeted, “Women belong in the kitchen”, which has now been deleted.
The above tweet sparked controversy on social media after Twitterati criticised the fast-food chain for the advertisement. However, the company deleted the original tweet and issued an apology, saying, “We decided to delete the original tweet after our apology. It was brought to our attention that there were abusive comments in the thread and we don’t want to leave the space open for that,” the company said.
“We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and we are sorry. Our aim was to draw attention to the fact that only 20% of professional chefs in UK kitchens are women and to help change that by awarding culinary scholarships. We will do better next time,” the tweet from the Burger King UK added.
What is the ad that sparked criticism?
“Fine dining kitchens, food truck kitchens, award-winning kitchens, casual dining kitchens, ghost kitchens, Burger King kitchens. If there’s a professional kitchen, women belong there,” said the full-page ad from the Burger King’s non-profit arm Burger King Foundation.
The controversy was posted in the print version of the New York Times, as per the report in the Hindustan Times. The ad was intended to drive the initiative of the company to launch its culinary scholarship program with the “Women belong in the kitchen” partaking most of the space.
The ad also went on to add, “But can you guess who’s leading those kitchens these days? Exactly. Only 24% of chef positions in America are occupied by women. Want to talk to head chefs? The number drops to fewer than 7 per cent.”
However, Burger King UK defended the above tweet after netizens reacted sharply to the advertisement on a particular occasion.
In response to one of the users who asked about the thought behind the ad, it said, “Our ‘thought process’ is that women are shockingly underrepresented in our industry, and we thought it was time we did something about it. We’ve created a scholarship to give more of our female employees the chance to pursue a culinary career.”
