‘Bring back the gender pay gap’: Insane response to women having fun at work
What was meant to be a fun video of a group of women joking around at work has sparked an unhinged, global response.
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“Bring back the gender pay gap.”
What could spark such a sexist comment in 2024? Depressingly, a simple TikTok by the Australian skincare brand TBH.
Last week, the office, which is made up of Gen Z employees, posted a clip of the team jumping on a trend of people sharing what they are wearing.
It is one of those ridiculously nonsensical trends that is just a bit of fun. People stand in a circle and announce something about themselves.
For instance, one employee at the business described herself as “5’3 with an attitude”.
Rachael Wilde, 27, who co-founded TBH skincare, described herself as a “Gen Z boss in a mini”. The mini refers to her wearing a short skirt.
It is simple, silly, and fun, and somehow, it landed the business in the middle of a bizarre, sexist wasteland.
The TikTok now has over 3 million views.
Mean comments came rolling in at first. The usual thing that happens when something you do goes viral: Not everyone likes it.
So someone commented and called it “peak corporate cringe”, another accused the Gen Z clip of being “Millennial core”, and another joked they should all be “fired”.
Then things took a turn.
Someone suggested the young workers should “get back in the kitchen” and another claimed this was proof the gender pay gap should be reinstated.
Which doesn’t even make sense because the gender pay gap in Australia is very much alive and well and is sitting at 21.7 per cent, according to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.
Social media personality Andrew Tate, who is a confessed “misogynist” and has been banned from multiple social media platforms, then reposted the clip on X and claimed the video was pushing a culture of “emasculating” men.
“If you do not escape The Matrix women like this will be your boss. Zog Corp loves emasculating men by forcing them to listen to semi-sentient females. If that doesn’t motivate you to get rich. Nothing will,” he wrote.
The clip then picked up speed on X, and people online were claiming this was somehow proof that women shouldn’t even be able to hold jobs.
People commented things like, “imagine if these girls ran the world” and called the TikTok “horrifying”.
As someone on X summarised, it went from a viral workplace clip to “thousands of men debating if women should have the right to work a job”.
Mrs Wilde told news.com.au that the business jumped on the trend because it looked like a few minutes of fun.
“There was a mix of feedback, as there always is on these kinds of videos when you go viral, but it really took a turn when we were reposted onto X,” she said.
“Essentially, we just ended up finding ourselves on the wrong side of the internet. We were surprised to see innocent fun upsetting so many people online. Not sure how us doing a dance in the office warranted so much feedback and hatred like this.”
The young business owner did add that although they have dealt with far too many “negative comments,” there are also people still coming to their “defence” and the business is “choosing to focus on that”.
Originally published as ‘Bring back the gender pay gap’: Insane response to women having fun at work
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