Arisha Hatch, the interim executive director of the women’s advocacy group UltraViolet, condemned the verdict as “a stain on a criminal justice system that for decades has failed to hold accountable abusers” and called it “an indictment of a culture in which not believing women and victims of sexual assault remains endemic.”
“This is a decisive moment for our justice system, one which threatens to undo the sacrifice of courageous survivors who stepped forward to share their stories in this trial, as well as to all those abused by Diddy who weren’t able to,” said Arisha Hatch, Ultraviolet's interim executive director
Women represent 58% of Facebook’s user base, yet no women sit on its board of directors — and 58,000 people have a problem with that. That’s the number of petitions being delivered to Facebook’s New York City office Wednesday afternoon. A protest is also scheduled outside of Facebook’s HQ on Madison Ave to demand the company put women on its board before the company goes public within the next few months.
NEW YORK, NY – The handful of protesters that gathered in front of Facebook’s office on Madison Avenue at noon was disappointed when the company refused to accept a petition signed by 53,000 users asking the company to include women on its board of directors.
The majority of Facebook users are women–58%–and yet they have no voice on the social network’s board.
NEW YORK — Facebook’s normally inauspicious office in midtown Manhattan was the target of about 30 protesters on Wednesday, who gathered to demand that the world’s most successful social networking company appoint a woman to its currently all-male, all-white board of directors — and that the appointment occur soon, before the company begins trading publicly on the nearby NASDAQ exchange, anticipated in mid-May or June.
A group of women’s rights activists are descending on Facebook’s New York offices, today, to deliver what it says is an online petition from 53,000 people that demands Facebook add a woman to its board of directors before the company goes public.
UltraViolet, a political group that fights sexism, has a bone to pick with Facebook. It wants Facebook to put a women on its board of directors and is urging its 300,000 members to petition Facebook about it. They have a point. More than half of Facebook’s users are women — 58% — Facebook says. And women are more active users of Facebook than men, doing two-thirds the sharing. So while Facebook is making a bundle selling ads to women, it is downright shameful that Facebook couldn’t find a single woman board member to help advise it. The irony of Facebook’s all male board is that the company’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg recently spoke out against how women were being kept out of power positions. At last month’s Women In The World conference in New York, Sandberg said, “Women have held 15 to 18 percent of top jobs for the past few years. Is this a stalled revolution?”
Mr. Limbaugh will lose some outlets next month regardless, when Cumulus, which carries him on nearly 40 of its stations, will launch its own syndicated program, The Mike Huckabee Show. Airing in the same noon-to-3-p.m. time period, it’s being promoted as “more conversation, less confrontation,” and is cleared to air on more than 130 stations. And Mr. Limbaugh’s critics, unmoved by his grudging apologies, are ready to besiege advertisers who return to his show. “Companies that come back will have to explain to their customers and their shareholders why they’re back,” said Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of UltraViolet.
The campaign to pressure advertisers to leave conservative Rush Limbaugh’s radio show after his misogynistic comments about a college student looks familiar – it was presaged six years ago in a similar effort directed at a San Francisco talk-radio station by an anonymous blogger called Spocko. Since then, contacting advertisers about the content their ads pay for has become routine, fueled by the Internet. This time, organizations such as Ultra Violet, an online activism site focused on women’s issues, are leading the backlash.
At the same time Carusone was contacting advertisers, Nita Chaudhary began her own, parallel effort. Chaudhary, who co- founded women’s-rights group UltraViolet last year, said she was incensed after reading through a transcript of Limbaugh’s “slut” comments. She spent that afternoon finding Limbaugh advertisers, via the Web and through Media Matters’ website, which had started to track who was still airing marketing on the show. Washington- based UltraViolet and Media Matters aren’t affiliated.
It has been nearly two weeks since Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, that is virtually an eternity. Yet the outrage over the conservative talk radio host’s remarks is still making headlines, spawning activist attacks and causing headaches for advertisers. Premiere Networks, the radio group that syndicates the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show, pulled all of its barter ads — which run at all hours, not just during Premiere Network programming– from the group’s affiliated stations. The company would not say whether the suspension, which runs from March 12 through March 23, was in response to the Limbaugh backlash, but the only two companies whose ads are exempted from the hiatus are LifeLock and Lear Financial, both of which have publicly said they will not pull their ads from Limbaugh’s show.