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Ideal Worker or Perfect Mom? Harvard Business Review Faces Backlash For Their Tweet

Ideal Worker or Perfect Mom?

Harvard Business Review faces tremendous backlash on Twitter as it is accused of having made an “inflammatory” comment in a tweet posted by their @HarvardBiz handle that said, “You can’t be both. Stop trying.”, in the caption. Not only the caption but also the post, Ideal Worker or Perfect Mom? It was written by Alison Beard.

Netizens ‘ accusations regard the caption and the story as degrading to women and imply that “women have to choose between work or motherhood— or that they can’t stand out in both.” While the premise that the tweet was made in a different way from what Twitter understands, the backlash doesn’t seem to stop.

Harvard Business Review has posted a twitter update on how it misunderstood the meaning of the caption, but it looks like people can’t stop finding it offensive. The tweet contains the “Ideal Worker or Perfect Mom” link of an article. The opinion article is based on new book launches such as Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter and Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. The caption, however, which reads: “You can’t be both. Stop trying.” may have given the impression that the author is trying to say a woman can’t do both. Look at the tweet here:

Harvard Business Review posted an update after the uproar which read: “We appreciate the feedback. The tweet was meant to refer to the difficulty of meeting the high standards of society for both mothers and workers, a subject of the article. It was not meant to imply that women had to choose between work or motherhood — or that they could not succeed at both.”

Check out the reactions 

Another Controversy Angle

The post has received strong criticism and is being blamed for the article’s tweet caption and title. Several people who read the article also said they found it no different from what the title suggests.

 

 

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