What's worse than hiring scantily-clad "booth babes" to show off gadgets at an electronics conference populated mostly by men?
Sending lascivious tweets about their appearance from the official company account. Which is precisely what Taiwanese hardware maker ASUS has just done.
ASUS' post, which smacks of sexism, shows a photo, taken from behind, of a shapely woman displaying ASUS' Transformer AIO tablet to a crowd of men and encourages followers to check out the woman's "pretty nice" looking "rear" (See the tweet below).
Claims of sexism in Silicon Valley often get short shrift. In a story posted Sunday, author David A. Kaplan told The New York Times that while the tech industry is known for fun and games, sexism just doesn't square with its reputation.
"You don’t really hear about randiness and mistreatment of women. That doesn’t prove it’s not there, but that’s not the lore," Kaplan told the paper.
It looks like it might be time to rethink the lore. The tweet sent several hours ago from the ASUS account offers yet another example of why the tech industry often leaves many women feeling like second-class citizens in a for-profit frat house.
Here's the tweet and its accompanying image (it has since been deleted):
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