14 DAY TRIAL // A former Microsoft female employee is suing the company for gender discrimination, claiming that the software giant doesn’t treat men and women equally and that the former are often promoted and rewarded with bigger salaries, detrimental to the latter.
Katie Moussouris, who previously also worked for Symantec, spent more than 7 years at Microsoft before eventually leaving in May 2014 to become the Chief Policy Officer at HackerOne.
At the Redmond-based giant, she worked as security strategist, senior security strategist, senior security strategist lead, with the last position being held for 3 years and 9 months.
In a statement for the Forbes, Moussouris explains that Microsoft doesn’t treat men and women working for the company equally and that male employees are often promoted despite the fact that female workers are at least equally qualified. Women are often given lower performance reviews, she pointed out.
“What happened to me is not unique,” she was quoted as saying. “This case will illuminate the broad patterns of decision-making against women. Fundamentally, this is about fairness and equality.”
Not her first complaint
In a statement issued today, Microsoft reveals that it previously reviewed similar complaints made by Moussouris, but it’ll carefully look into this new one as well.
“We’re committed to a diverse workforce, and to a workplace where all employees have the chance to succeed. We’ve previously reviewed the plaintiff’s allegations about her specific experience and did not find anything to substantiate those claims, and we will carefully review this new complaint,” a company spokesperson goes on to add.
Obviously, such accusations do not sit well with Microsoft, especially after a comment made by CEO Satya Nadella, in which he said that female employees should wait for companies to offer them raises and not to specifically ask for them. Nadella then changed his statement, posing against gender discrimination and ensuring everyone that Microsoft treats men and women equally.