Has LinkedIn Become A Playground For Sexist Professionals?
LinkedIn has long been recognized as the boring stiff of social networks; used mostly for professional networking (or bragging) and little else. But that might be changing, due to some recent allegations from women claiming to have been the subject of sexism on LinkedIn.
According to the Daily Mail, hundreds of women have come forward claiming to be the victims of sexism on the popular professional social network. A few of the women have taken to Twitter to display the sexist messages they’ve been sent on LinkedIn, many of which appear to be pickup lines.
Alexander Carter-Silk, an attorney, recently came under fire for commenting on a younger woman’s LinkedIn photo and sending her a private message. The woman is Charlotte Proudman, a human rights lawyer.
According to Proudman, the LinkedIn message from Carter-Silk said, “I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!!”
She has since written about sexism in The Independent, saying, “”If people don’t experience the repercussions for their actions, which are plainly wrong, then their behaviour will not change, and neither will sexist culture.”
The sexism incident on LinkedIn has gone viral, with a wide variety of reactions from feminists, the general public and people who use the platform for business networking. It seems that most of the reactions are positive towards the platform and negative towards the sexism, with most users touting the usefulness of the professional platform.
“LinkedIn has been nothing but helpful for my business,” said Freeman Lewin, an expert on customer relations and the young CEO at a corporate gift company. “I use it mainly to build professional relationships and interact with potential clients to boost customer loyalty. It’s disheartening to think it would be used in any way other than a professional networking platform.”
Mendy Gansbourg, a business expert and founder of a startup, echoed those sentiments by saying, “I use LinkedIn to stay in touch with former colleagues and current business partners. I really like the LinkedIn Pulse feature, so I can share my expertise with other thought leaders. My team has been fortunate enough to never have to deal with sexism on the platform.”
Meanwhile, people on the other end of the spectrum were chiming in about how the LinkedIn platform is simply the newest tool in an age-old problem: sexism.
‘You’ve ruined your career’ critics tell lawyer in LinkedIn sexism row http://t.co/cmCVzFUKsn pic.twitter.com/lwrmAQWW2F
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) September 10, 2015
LinkedIn sexism row raises the question- Why bother with photos on it? What’s your appearance got to do with networking? #charlotteproudman
— Matt Gray (@mattgrayc64) September 10, 2015
In an interesting turn of events, the Evening Standard recently reported that Proudman herself has made suggestive remarks on her friend’s photos on Facebook, commenting with remarks such as “Hot stuff!” on friends photos. Then again, commenting on friend’s photos on a purely social networking site is a bit different than using LinkedIn, a professional platform, to make sexual remarks towards someone you don’t know.
[Photo credit to CharlotteProudman.com]
