'Women At Microsoft Are Sexualized By Their Male Managers,' Lawsuit Alleges (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to a newly unsealed court filing, women at Microsoft who work in technical jobs filed 238 internal complaints pertaining to gender discrimination or sexual harassment from 2010 through 2016. The new document was first reported Monday evening by Reuters. The figures were revealed as part of a proposed class-action lawsuit originally filed in 2015 (Moussouris v. Microsoft). The female plaintiffs argue that the company's internal rating system discriminates against women and disfavors professional advancement for women.

As part of the class certification process and civil discovery, Microsoft handed over years of records to the plaintiffs' lawyers. In the Monday-released filing, which was originally submitted to the court in October 2017, Moussouris' lawyer, Michael Subit, wrote that "Microsoft's Culture is Rife with Sexual Harassment" before continuing: "Company records indicate that women at Microsoft are sexualized by their male managers and coworkers, leading to a substantial number of incidents of alleged sexual harassment, and even several incidents of sexual assault, that often go unpunished." Specifically, Subit continued, Microsoft's internal unit (known as "ERIT") received 108 complaints of sexual harassment filed by female US-based technical employees, 119 complaints of gender discrimination, eight complaints of retaliation, and three complaints of pregnancy discrimination. Out of all of the claimed instances of gender discrimination, Microsoft's internal investigation only found that one such complaint was "founded."

Comments

not to worry

[nimbius]

the fastest way to get microsoft to correct their sexist and discriminatory behavior is to inform them Google or Apple have created a cloud-based system of equality that operates as a SAAS/FAAS service with integrated tenant metering and billing.

once thats done, all you need to do is wait 4 years for Microsoft to unveil their much less popular version of the same thing and viola! you've eliminated up to 40% of the sexism and somehow managed to introduce a misandric version of Clippy....

Rife?

[Richard_at_work]

238 complaints is, based on Microsofts current employee count of around 124,000, one complaint per 521 employees. Over a 6 year period. While a zero rate would be nice, I don't think that's too bad either.

Plus we seem to be getting to that stage where some people consider allegations to be enough that action simply has to be taken, screw the investigation and screw the evidence. An allegation has been made, so punishment must be enacted.

While a world where women are considered a lesser species is certainly a world that needs to be eliminated, a world where mere allegations are enough is not the world we should be aiming to replace it with.

Re:Rife?

[quantaman]

I suspect the vast majority of problems go unreported even when management is responsive.

Why are we basing this on number of complaints? Anyone can file a complaint. One person with an overactive imagination can file multiple complaints without merit. The stat is already skewed far in favor of exaggerating the scope of the problem, and you're proposing skewing it even more. I thought one of the basic premises of our society was innocent until proven guilty?

If you truly want to gauge the scope of the problem, the number you should be looking at is the number of unique persons who were investigated and found to have committed sexual harassment. That eliminates the complaints found to be without merit. And it eliminates multiple complaints against a single individual. So the problem is likely much smaller than one complaint per 521 employees.

Even if 100% of the complaints are legit, the actual problem is probably on the order of one individual being complained against per 2000-5000 employees. If you base it on the number of accusers Bill Cosby has, the problem ends up being one individual in 15,000. Meaning of Microsoft's employee count of 124,000, there are probably only 8 individuals guilty of sexual harassment. And if 9 out of 10 people experiencing harassment don't report it, that still means it's being perpetrated by fewer than 100 individuals. The other 99.9% are innocent.

You math.... strangely.

Lets just look at Bill Cosby for a moment, he raped dozens of women. And the vast majority of victims didn't come forward until decades later when everyone else started coming forward. If rape victims weren't reporting you think victims of sexual harassment are? If you were a woman being sexually harassed at work don't you think your first instinct would be to tough it out and not cause a scene?

It's the pattern that shows up with the majority of the #MeToo cases, one or two women come forward and then half a dozen more suddenly pop up to credibly corroborate their story. And in most of those cases I suspect there's a ton more who never come forward.

It's not surprising when you think about it, would you really want to call up a reporter to talk about getting sexually harassed? Would you want to risk having your name thrown all over the internet as a victim of sexual harassment?

So yes, most workplaces have a lot more than 1 sexual harasser in 521 employees, they probably have a lot more than 0.1% of employees harassing. The question with Microsoft isn't whether this is the tip of the iceberg, because it most certainly is. The question is whether their iceberg is unusually large compared to any other organization.

Re: First poster to mention SJW gets smacked

[Anonymous Coward]

"Its interesting that these same men feel threatened when a woman gets a chance to retaliate against unfair treatment."

It is also interesting that anything less than preferential treatment is "discrimination" to feminists/sjw's.

When even a false accusation can ruin your life, career, etc- of course men will pushback against this stuff. That goes double when there are ZERO consequences for knowingly filing a false complaint.

Re: First poster to mention SJW gets smacked

[Train0987]

And because of that you're going to see a dramatic decrease in the number of women hired in tech.