Does Burger King UK Really Feel Women Belong in the Kitchen? #PURE3600SP21

Recently, Burger King’s United Kingdom division tweeted a graphic for International Women’s Day. This tweet severely fell flat due to the controversial message written on the graphic. Burger King decided it was a good idea to support women by writing “Women belong in the kitchen.” This message sparked quick backlash, as many were questioning the reasoning behind it. Burger King then released tweets with more context to the original post saying “If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender ratio.” Most followers and users ignored the second tweet and were stuck on the initial message. They received loads of backlash, thus Burger king frantically spent the rest of the day responding to comments, explaining and apologizing for the message. Burger King finally removed the initial tweet and released a statement apologizing for their post and explaining their original goal for the post.

I was shocked when I saw this on twitter initially. I quickly started googling what this was and if it was real, because I honestly thought to myself, “no way something like this, especially in this current climate, that a company would okay this to be released.” What could they possibly have been thinking when creating this campaign? I understand the goal is to promote female chefs, but you can still do that by not diminishing women and finding better verbiage than a sentence that is closely related to gender inequality. It is gross to read as a female and it makes me not want to support Burger King as a whole.

This is an easy thing for a company to avoid. Do not post things using sexist verbiage. I do not believe there is any context where this post would be okay. Companies and Pr professionals must read the room and know what social issues are currently being talked about in society.

My best advice to the PR team at Burger King is to read the room and brush up on gender/social issues.