Businessweek pulls “attractive female students” poll after backlash

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:10:00 +0000

On Friday, Nov. 9, Businessweek asked its Twitter followers to vote on "Which business school has the most attractive female students." Predictably, readers found the tweet and the poll it linked to offensive. Writer Shelby Knox replied with sarcasm: "Do women go to B-School to run companies, be on boards? Hell no! For the pleasure of male students," while Jamil Smith admonished Businessweek, writing, "You'd think @BW would be above chauvinist crap like this, or should want to be."

But, as Daily Dot's Aja Romano points out, this is not the first year that Businessweek has issued polls rating the attractiveness of students:

The choice between automatons and leaders

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:29:00 +0000

Ask corporate executives what they really want in a legislator, and they probably won’t use words like “principled” or “well-informed.” If the cocktails are appropriately strong and inhibitions are consequently reduced, executives will likely tell you in a moment of candor that the best politician, from their perspective, is the one who is incurious and who possesses very little policy expertise. They don’t want people with inconvenient morals, ethics or brains getting in their way. They want the equivalent of T-1000s from the "Terminator" films: unthinking, fully programmable cyborgs willing and able to shape-shift in order to carry out a mission.

Alas, it is rare to get such an admission in public, and it is even more rare to get said admission in the pages of a major publication. That’s why Businessweek’s recent examination of the country’s marquee U.S. Senate race is so significant. In looking at the Massachusetts matchup between Republican incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren, the magazine quotes Brown fundraiser Lawrence McDonald, a former Lehman trader, acknowledging that he and his Wall Street friends hate the idea of an independently informed legislator who might bring her own wisdom to Washington.

Salon.com > Businessweek

Businessweek pulls “attractive female students” poll after backlash

The choice between automatons and leaders