When your Silicon Valley workforce is mostly male and you want to throw a themed-party, what to do? Well, a Twitter team decided it would be a good idea to hold a frat-themed celebration in San Francisco recently.
The company quickly apologized for the misstep, which included “Twitter Frat House” signage and a beer pong table complete with a Twitter (TWTR) logo.
On Tuesday, images of the frat party surfaced on social media when a less-than-enthused female employee brought attention to the event using Facebook (FB), which was quickly removed, but was grabbed and tweeted by the group Global Women in Tech:
Silicon Valley US: @Twitter is having a #Frat party for employees. #Lovewhereyouwork #diversitymatters #brogrammers. pic.twitter.com/WkX4aHHl6g
— Global Tech Women (@GlobalTechWomen) July 22, 2015
Jim Prosser, a Twitter spokesperson, apologized in a statement to Fusion: “This social event organized by one team was in poor taste at best, and not reflective of the culture we are building here at Twitter,” Prosser said. “We’ve had discussions internally with the organizing team, and they recognize that this theme was ill-chosen.”
As the publication notes, Twitter is currently embroiled in a gender discrimination lawsuit in which a female software engineer, Tina Huang, said that promotions are given more frequently to men. Only 10% of Twitter’s tech employees are female, according to company data released last year.
