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Burger King Is Getting Flame-Grilled For Tweeting That ‘Women Belong In The Kitchen’ On International Women’s Day

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To celebrate International Women’s Day, Burger King UK tweeted the following:

The tweet from the fast food giant was meant to highlight the lack of female chefs in the restaurant business, which is an important issue. But removed from any additional context, it came across as tone-deaf and sexist. “If they want to, of course,” the thread continued. “Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career. We are proud to be launching a new scholarship programme which will help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!”

But you wouldn’t know that from the “women belong in the kitchen” tweet (100,000+ retweets and counting) — the full-page ad in the New York Times is only slightly clearer.

As AdWeek notes, “The print ad quickly makes it apparent that the headline is being used ironically, as the message continues: ‘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.’ However, the same campaign, created by agency David Miami, was repurposed into a series of tweets via the @BurgerKingUK Twitter account, where the full context wasn’t quite as obvious.”

A lot of bad choices were made here, but the most bizarre is that it could have been one tweet:

When a Twitter user pointed out that “somebody working at Burger King really looked at this and thought it was a good idea,” the account replied, “To bring attention to the huge lack of female representation in the restaurant industry? Yeah, we think it’s a good idea, that’s why we’ve created a scholarship to help give more of our female employees the chance to pursue a culinary career.” Maybe start there, not with a sexist trope, next time.

The Wendy’s roast is coming.

What a bad week for the royals.