A Czech Nuclear Plant Held a Bikini Contest to Select its Summer Intern

A nuclear power station in the Czech Republic has been slammed for inviting Facebook users to select its summer intern by ‘liking’ photos of female candidates posing in bikinis.

The Temelín Power Station, owned by the Czech conglomerate CEZ Group, last week posted pictures of ten high-school graduates on its Facebook page, CNN reports. Each woman was wearing a bikini and a hard hat and had been photographed inside the station’s cooling towers. A post above the picture gallery said that the woman who received the most ‘likes’ would be crowned “Miss Energy 2017” and awarded the two-week internship.

“We think photographs are very tasteful,” the company wrote in a comment on the post, according to CNN’s translation. “The combination of beauty and the industrial environment gives an interesting result.”

The post elicited almost 700 comments on Facebook, with many users slamming the competition as sexist. “I thought this was the 21st century,” one user wrote. Another commented: “You find the number of likes under half-naked picture of a young lady as adequate and/or tasteful criterion for a career opportunity that is promoted as ‘professional?'”

Read more: Sexism Is Over? Give Me a Break.

Two days after the bikini photographs were posted, CEZ took to Facebook to say that all 10 women would be offered internship and to offer an apology. “The purpose of the competition was to promote technical education,” the post read. “But if the original vision raised doubts or concerns, we are very sorry.”

[CNN]