A company perceived by many as “progressive” is now receiving backlash after neglecting to follow through on sexual harassment complaints made by their female software engineer. Her complaints include having male coworkers spike her drink with alcohol, shoot her with nerf guns, send her sexually suggestive texts and one having slapped her in the face. This female employee, Loretta Lee, is most disturbed by her encounter with a male employee that she found hiding beneath her desk and whom she believes installed some sort of camera underneath the desk. Her suit accuses Google of continuously ignoring the pattern of sexual harassment and punishing the victim.
Google is facing an additional lawsuit from James Damore, after being fired for a controversial memo about gender: “advancing harmful gender stereotypes”. Damore’s firing created outrage amongst the right with claims that Google discriminates against white male conservatives. Tim Chevalier, Google’s site reliability engineer, in addition, is filing his own lawsuit after being fired for speaking out against the aforementioned memo.
Google’s biggest issue appears to be their inability to address and combat these issues. Loretta Lee’s biggest fears were realized when she finally filed a complaint after being continuously pressured by HR. She became ostracized by her peers and everyone in her group refused to approve her work which ultimately led to her termination.
Large companies such as these need to make a more intentional effort to combat such gender discrimination in the workplace. With the Google workforce already consisting of majority of men and an investigation into the disparity between men and women’s pay, they need to consider some serious changes to their infrastructure and their companies attitude. In order to set an example, a company with such recognition needs to be active in creating an equal workspace and continue to combat people who believe that a company with a technical workforce of 80% men and majority white and Asian (1% African American) are somehow discriminating against white male conservatives.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/28/google-lawsuit-sexual-harassment-bro-culture
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-fires-author-anti-diversity-memo