Internet Reacts After Ashton Kutcher Shares Divisive Questions For Gender Equality Event

Actor and startup founder Ashton Kutcher won the ire of many on social media this week after he announced plans to host a “live open dialog about gender equality in the work place [sic] and in tech in general.” But in sharing questions meant for initiating thoughtful dialogue during the Facebook event planned for next week, Kutcher left many scratching their heads as the proposed talking points appeared to perpetuate many misconceptions about working women — specifically women in tech.

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The one-time “Just Married” heartthrob wrote Thursday on LinkedIn the event would be streamed live on his Facebook page on “Monday or Tuesday next week.” Kutcher added that he’d be hosting the event alongside Effie Epstein, his partner at Sound Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Kutcher and Guy Oseary. The multihyphenate's proposed questions for the event are as follows (errors printed as they appeared):

• What are the Rules for dating in the work place? Flirting?
• What are the clear red lines?
• Where does the line between work life and social life stop and start?
• Given that in the short term we are clearly bound by the existing educated talent pool in STEM, other than promoting STEM education parity going forward, how do we stop gap a solution?
• Should investors invest in ideas that they believe to have less merit so as to create equality across a portfolio?
• How do we create channels to promote female entrepreneurship?
• What advice should we be giving to female entrepreneurs?
• Are there known mentorship programs for female entrepreneurs?
• Are there any aggregated or clear pieces of media or educational platforms to help men understand where their blindspots may be?
• Are these the right questions?

Paradigm CEO Joelle Emerson screen grabbed the questions from Kutcher’s LinkedIn post and posted them to Twitter.

“Yikes. These are definitely *not* the right questions,” she captioned the tweet to her 5,000 followers. “Most rely on flawed assumptions and perpetuate problematic myths.”

One Twitter user responded to the tweet that the questions could be helpful to a “broad” audience, seemingly acknowledging that they were indeed problematic but writing that “some people still need to hear the answers.” But others weren’t so sure.

“Tech bros in general, and VC bros in particular, KNOW what is appropriate, there are just no consequences thus don't give a shit,” wrote one user.

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“This doesnt help anyone, least of all the women its intended to help,” another responded. “It just creates a completely skewed paradigm w/ the same issues.”

Emily Peck, a senior reporter at the Huffington Post, questioned whether the post could be fake, pointing to Kutcher’s low follower count as evidence.

For her part, Emerson went on to proposed ten of her own questions for the event.

“We know most companies wait far too long to consider creating inclusive cultures. How can startups design inclusive cultures early?” she proposed as one.

“We know bias and pattern-matching play a significant role in VC and tech company decision-making,” she proposed as another. “How can we make better [...] more fair, and more objective decisions across investing, hiring, distributing work, evaluating performance, promotions, comp, etc?”

Neither a representative for Kutcher nor Sound Ventures returned International Business Times’ request for comment regarding the backlash to the questions.