Uber Board Member Resigns Over Sexist Remark

Uber is in trouble. After being criticised for its culture of workplace sexism and the many cases of sexual harassment levied against its employees, a board member is in the news for making a sexist joke at a meeting designed to combat sexism.

Uber board member David Bonderman made a joke about how much women talk, according to the audio of the meeting which was obtained by Yahoo Finance. When this caused a furore, he resigned from his post.

The sequence of events unfolded like this: when Ariana Huffington, who is a board member, said that there is data which shows how when there is one woman on the board, it’s much more likely that there will be a second woman on the board, Bonderman replied, saying “actually what it shows is it’s much likely to be more talking”.

And of course Twitter cannot stop talking about what happened.

Are you f*cking kidding me? Uber board member David Bonderman says sexist thing at sexual harassment apology all-hands pic.twitter.com/YYshcXZ2Ge

— Josh Constine (@JoshConstine) June 13, 2017

After the meeting, employees sent off emails to their managers and to Uber’s head of human resources. Following this, Bonderman apologised for his remark, and resigned from the board.

“I appreciate David doing the right thing for Uber at this time of critical cultural changes at the company,” Huffington said in a statement.

Uber’s board of directors has voted to adopt all recommendations from a report made by former US Attorney General Eric Holder on the company’s culture. Its CEO, Travis Kalanick, is now on a temporary leave of absence from the company.

Uber hired Holder and his firm in February to investigate the company’s practices after an engineer, Susan Fowler, published a blog post about how she dealt with sexual harassment and how nothing was done about it.

Also Read: The Boys Club At Uber Shakes Up, CEO Sent On Leave: All You Need To Know