Burger King causes uproar over sexist Tweet on International Women's Day

The 'Twitterverse' went up in flames yesterday on international women's day after the UK branch at Burger King decided to post a not-so-well-thought-out tweet that allegedly was meant to empower women. Instead, what they posted backfired making them the butt of the joke with other fast-food heavy-weights chiming in to take a dig at BK.

A marketing ploy that backfired

The since deleted tweet in question read: 'Women belong in the kitchen.' Before tweeting 'If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women' as the initial tweet went viral with thousands criticizing the historically misogynistic phrase.

Talk about a failed attempt at damage control! The company waited before deleted the tweet by posting the following:

We're on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career. #IWD We are proud to be launching a new scholarship programme which will help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!

But fast food giant KFC was quick tongued by posting a meme to give out some much-needed friendly advice to BK that read:

The best time to delete the post was immediately and the second best time was right now.

To which the people at UK Burger King replied by saying that:

Why would we delete a tweet that's drawing attention to a huge lack of female representation in our industry, we thought you'd be on board with this as well?

A long overdue apology

However, it did not take long before the company gave in to the uproar on social media. They released one more statements on twitter that read:

We decided to delete the original tweet after our apology. It was brought to our attention that there were abusive comments in the thread and we don't want to leave the space open for that. We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and we're sorry. We will do better next time.