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The largest cybersecurity company in the US has apologised for using two women posing with company-branded lampshades on their heads at a trade event in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
They were meant to draw attention to Palo Alto Networks’ sponsorship of a “CyberRisk Collaborative Happy Hour” at the Black Hat conference.<\/p>\n
But the publicity stunt has sparked a backlash, with critics calling it “sexist”, “creepy” and “tone deaf”.<\/p>\n
In a LinkedIn post<\/a>, the firm\u2019s boss Nikesh Arora admitted it was a misjudgement, saying it was “unequivocally not the culture we support, or aspire to be”.<\/p>\n The company has faced fierce criticism online for the lampshade outfits, which obscured the women\u2019s faces.<\/p>\n “So we women are nothing more than props to you? We are only at BlackHat to be lampshade holders?” asked executive advisor Olivia Rose in a LinkedIn post<\/a> that eventually prompted Mr Arora\u2019s apology.<\/p>\n “Shame on you – just shame”, she wrote.<\/p>\n The image of the women was taken by LinkedIn user Sean Juroviesky<\/a> who described the scene as “sexist”.<\/p>\n “What the hell Palo Alto Networks is it 1960?”, he commented.<\/p>\n One Reddit user, who claimed to have been at the event, said they left early as it was “creepy” and “gross”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The idea for the outfits seems to have been inspired by the so-called “booth babes” of the early days of the Consumer Electronics Show, in the 1960s, where women were hired as hostesses at what were mostly male-attended events.<\/p>\n By the 1990s the use of what were often scantily-clad women in this way started facing a backlash, and by the 2010s it had largely disappeared.<\/p>\n But the male dominance of the tech industry has not gone away – nor have concerns that women are being shut out or treated in sexist ways.<\/p>\n When it shut unexpectedly earlier this year<\/a>, the tech network Women Who Code said its vision of a tech industry “where diverse women and historically excluded people thrive at every level is not fulfilled”.<\/p>\n One of the few female tech CEO\u2019s Bumble\u2019s Lidiane Jones told the BBC this year<\/a> it was “still not an equitable journey for women today” in the industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n