Distracting Clothes & Casual Sexism: Ex Facebook Employee’s Expose

Women employees at the social networking giant Facebook are often told not to wear “revealing” dresses that may “distract” co-workers, a former Facebook employee has claimed in his book.

According to a report in The Telegraph, Antonio Garcia Martinez, who worked at Facebook before being fired, made these allegations in his book titled Chaos Monkeys.

“Our male HR authority, with occasional backup from his female counterpart, launched into a speech about avoiding clothing that ‘distracted' coworkers. I'd later learn that managers did in fact occasionally pull aside female employees and read them the riot act,” Martinez claimed.

The Facebook team is still dominated by white and Asian men. Diversity improved only marginally, although Facebook added 2897 employees this year, TechCrunch reported last year, citing the company's latest demographic report.

The 10,082-person company has only one percent more women as a share of all employees than a year ago, despite a 40 percent increase in the head count.

Ex-Facebook workers have claimed that allegations of sexism are not taken seriously.

Martinez also claimed that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is prone to angry outbursts.

“After an unknown employee leaked details of a new feature to the press, Zuckerberg reportedly emailed the entire office with the subject line ‘Please resign', claiming that the person in question had betrayed the team,” The report said, citing Martinez.

A Facebook spokesperson did not comment on Martinez' allegations, the report added.

The company has launched several initiatives to improve diversity, out of which the most noticeable is its diverse slate approach, which aims to “present hiring managers with at least one qualified candidate who is a member of an under represented group to fill any open role”.