‘Women have a place in the kitchen’: Burger King campaign that sparked outrage in UK

The community manager of Burger King in the UK thought he had a great idea and took advantage of the International Women’s Day (8M) to launch a gender-focused Twitter thread.

But his visibility strategy was to start with a provocative and completely sexist: “Women belong to the kitchen”.

Immediately, and regardless of the body of the message, the prayer sparked all kinds of reactions on social media, in a day already churned by demands for justice and the cessation of femicides, discussions over whether it was ‘a date to celebrate or “congratulate” women and the reactionary comments of people opposed to feminist protests.

“If you want of course. However, only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender perspective in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees to pursue culinary careers. #IWD ”, continues the Twitter thread published by the British branch of the multinational fast food restaurant.

Hundreds of people criticized the company’s communication. “I understand what they were looking for, but the execution was very, very poor.”, and “Please teach the intern who tweeted this how to market properly,” were some of the comments read on the social network. As is often the case, the focus has been more on the form of communication than on the substance of the issue.

“We are proud to launch a new scholarship program that will help employees of Burger King to chase your culinary dreams! », Concludes the message. Another food company has entered the discussion: the video game chain of the American KFC, also based in the United Kingdom, recommended that the hamburger account delete the tweet as soon as possible, but the latter insisted on the effect of her controversial message.

“Why delete a tweet that draws attention to a major lack of female representation in our industry? We think you would agree with that as well. We launched a scholarship to help more of our employees pursue culinary careers, ”she said. Burger King United Kingdom in another tweet.

Through virtual translators, the campaign also impacted other non-English speaking regions. The Argentinian account @becausetrend he retweeted the message in Spanish and generated a whole series of similar discussions with regard to our country.

THE NATION

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