Facebook’s Move a Good First Step

ltraviolet, a new community of women and men, fighting to expand women’s rights and combat sexism everywhere – from politics and government to media and pop culture, has been running a campaign for months to urge Facebook to appoint women to it’s board. Last month, right before Facebook went public, Ultraviolet delivered a petition to Facebook headquarters in New York City signed by more than 53,000 people demanding Facebook appoint women to their board and released this video to highlight the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raNwYycMHfc

Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of Ultraviolet, released the statement below on the news that Facebook has appointed Sheryl Sandberg to its board.

“This is an important step in the right direction and a victory for the more than 53,000 Ultraviolet members who called on Facebook to make this move months ago. The fact of the matter is our months long campaign should have never been necessary. Putting women on the boards of major corporations should be a no brainer and standard business practice. Sadly it is not. We hope this is a first step for Facebook and in the coming months more women will be added to their board. In addition, we hope that other companies with all male boards, particularly those in the tech sector, will follow Facebook’s lead. We will continue to campaign to ensure that these companies do the right thing.”