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April 13, 2012

Is Facebook sexist?

Facebook is being criticised for having no women on its board but is it alone?

By Cbr Rolling Blog

woman
Photo Credit: Victor

Ultraviolet, a women’s rights group, launched a petition asking Facebook to put women on its board.

In an effort to get the social networking company to place a woman on its board before going public, co founder Nita Chaudhary has asked the help of the rights group’s 300,000 members in signing the petition.

"The fact that a company as large as Facebook with a massive global reach does not have a single woman on their board is nothing short of shameful," Chaudhary said in a statement . "Facebook owes it success and makes a ton of money off of its women users."

Right now, the social-networking site’s board is made up of seven people including Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

According to Ultraviolet, 58 percent of Facebook users are women. Also, the group claimed 62% of posting and 71% of daily fan activity on the site are made by women. The activist group says that there should be more female leadership since so many users are female.

This isn’t the first time Facebook’s lack of women on their board has been pointed out. Earlier this year The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which is the second-largest pension fund in the United States, publically declared that Facebook should add women to its board.

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However, Facebook is not the only socially based, Silicon Valley Company to exclude women from its board. Twitter, PayPal, and Foursquare’s boards are also all male.

Other companies like Linkedin, Apple, Amazon, Groupon and Yelp, however, have at least one woman sitting on their board.

In a New Yorker article last year about Sheyrl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg spoke about Facebook’s absence of women on the board.

"We have a very small board," Zuckerberg told the New Yorker. "I’m going to find people who are helpful, and I don’t particularly care what gender they are or what company they are. I’m not filling the board with check boxes."

Do you think companies with no women on their board are sexist? Comment below the line.

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