Facebook under fire (again) for all-male board
The fact that the social-networking site doesn't have any women on its board "is nothing short of shameful," says the newest advocacy group to join the FACE IT campaign.
The campaign to get Facebook to appoint a female board member is ramping up. The FACE IT campaign launched earlier this week to draw attention to the fact that the social-networking site had no women on its board of directors and now other groups and individuals are signing on.
Joining the campaign today is the group Ultraviolet, which is a women's group co-founded by Nita Chaudhary who was most recently the outspoken campaign and organizing director for MoveOn.org Political Action. Although Ultraviolet is fairly new on the scene, it already boasts 300,000 members.
"The fact that a company as large as Facebook with a massive global reach does not have a single woman on their board is nothing short of shameful," Chaudhary said in a statement today. "Facebook owes it success and makes a ton off money off of its women users."
The goal of the campaign is to get Facebook to appoint a woman to its board before going public, which should happen in the coming weeks. When it does go public, it is slated to be one of the largest companies in the world.
Right now, the social-networking site's board is made up of seven white men that includes Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
According to Ultraviolet, 58 percent of Facebook users are women; additionally, women are responsible for 62 percent of posting and make up 71 percent of the daily fan activity on the site. The activist group says that there should be more female leadership since so many users are female.
Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley company to exclude women from its board, however. Twitter, PayPal, and Foursquare's boards are also all male.
A Facebook spokesperson told CNET that "due to quiet period restrictions, we aren't commenting on this issue at this time."