Sexism Is Still a Thing At Microsoft's GDC Party (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes from an article on TechCrunch: Microsoft hired a bunch of women wearing very little clothing to dance and socialize with people at the company's official Game Developers Conference after-party last night in San Francisco, Business Insider reports. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, said in a statement to TechCrunch. "At Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was not consistent or aligned to our values. It was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. I know we disappointed many people and I'm personally committed to holding ourselves to higher standards. We must ensure that diversity and inclusion are central to our everyday business and core values. We will do better in the future." What's problematic is that Microsoft chose to throw a party that clearly caters to heterosexual men by hiring women as objects of sex.

Comments

Give an inch and they take a foot

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is sexism then I don't want equality. Humans are creatures of sex and women at this event are getting compensated for their performance. What's the problem?

Re:Give an inch and they take a foot

[maas15]

I honestly thing it's pretty tasteless to hire strippers for any sort of party, especially one on the corporate bankroll. That's one of those classic ways to get fired - use a company credit card to hire a stripper for ANY reason.

Re:What's the problem?

[Jiro]

This is misleading. A lot of the purchases by women consist of women buying it for family members and the person who actually plays the game is male.

Also, figures for how many "players" of games are women typically lump together casual games with the type of games that Microsoft is marketing here. Microsoft isn't trying to appeal to the Candy Crush audience.