Dive Brief:

• Twitter garnered some internet side-eye when it held a frat-themed staff party on Tuesday – partcularly poorly timed, as the company is currently facing a gender discrimination lawsuit.
• The lawsuit, filed in March, was brought against Twitter by Tina Huang, a female software engineer who claims that the company’s promotion process unfairly favors men, according to Fusion.
• The larger company of Twitter has distanced themselves from the party, claiming it was the work of one team. “We’ve had discussions internally with the organizing team, and they recognize that this theme was ill-chosen,” said Jim Prosser, a spokesman for Twitter.

Dive Insight:

Quite a few commentators have called the tech industry “fratty” due to its gender disparities, said Fusion. For Twitter to literally display such an attitude (even in jest) is awkward, to say the least.

Internal employee diversity numbers that Twitter released last year showed that only 10% of the company’s tech employees were women, according to Fusion. According to Huang’s lawsuit, only men were promoted to the top level principal and senior staff engineer positions during her five-year tenure there.

“Twitter has no meaningful promotion process for these jobs: no published promotion criteria, nor any internal hiring, advancement, or application processes for employees because Twitter has no meaningful promotion process for these jobs,” reads the filed lawsuit.

Diversity is a direct reflection of workplace culture – something HR needs to keep in mind while recruiting, hiring and promoting. Finding ways to reduce hiring bias is key to creating an inclusive workplace.