'Women At Microsoft Are Sexualized By Their Male Managers,' Lawsuit Alleges (arstechnica.com) 181
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."
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."
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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introduce a misandric version of Clippy....
"Hi! It looks like you're FUCKING A WHITE MALE! Would you like to apologize?"
Rife? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The number seems low but 1/119 (or 238, I'm not confident how we're supposed to read the number) seems lower.
I suspect the vast majority of problems go unreported even when management is responsive. And if there's a perception that management is burying problems then women are going to be even more reluctant to come forward.
Re:Rife? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [nbcnews.com], 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.
Re:Rife? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [nbcnews.com], 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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
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"So yes, most workplaces have a lot more than 1 sexual harasser in 521 employees,"
I see you subscribe to the Anita Sarkeesian theory of "Everything is sexist."
The majority of #metoo cases, as far as I'm aware, have no evidence whatsoever. So the dozen who pop up suddenly to corroborate the story aren't really proving anything, they're just agreeing. A suprious claim corroborated by 10 other spurious claims doesn't make it truth.
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Those are complaints that were recorded, and not to mention all those who were to afraid to complain to begin with... see the Iowa legislature for a recent example of people in power not getting in trouble for being a*holes.
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But you really can't add "All those that weren't recorded" without any kind of data. You might as well assume, then, that every female employee gets raped five times a day but is afraid to report it.
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You can show, perhaps, that women who complained faced some sort of retaliation. People can investigate and find out things about what really happened. It's almost certain that some women did not report some sexual harassment, so it's reasonable to talk about the complaints not filed. We just don't know how many.
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If it's almost certain that some incidents weren't reported, then it's also almost certain that some of the incidents that WERE reported were blown out of proportion or fabricated entirely.
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Not necessarily, depending on how HR or management reacts to complaints. In any case, this will come out in investigation and discovery.
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Then "not necessarily" applies to "women who complained faced some sort of retaliation" as well.
That too will come out in investigation and discovery. Why is "women who complained faced some sort of retaliation" certain, and "some of the incidents that WERE reported were blown out of proportion or fabricated entirely" not necessarily so ?
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Because it's possible for the company to dissuade women from complaining to the point that nobody will dare except for something egregious. I don't know whether this was the situation or not, and in any particular case it's likely that some of the complaints were exaggerated or possibly fabricated entirely.
Re: Rife? (Score:2)
"It is possible" does not answer the question that why "not necessarily" cannot be said about it.
When the best you can say about something is that "it is possible", you are essentially saying that it is not necessary.
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I fail to understand. I said that there would not necessarily be unfounded complaints, and provided a possible explanation. Clearly, if X is possible, not-X is not necessarily true.
Re: Rife? (Score:2)
In this case, X is possible as well as not necessary. Y is also possible as well as not necessary.
But you say only "possible" for one, and "not necessary" for the other.
X = women who complained faced some sort of retaliation
Y = some of the incidents that WERE reported were blown out of proportion or fabricated entirely
Perception (Score:1)
Sexual harassment is subjective. So is "sexualization".
Grabbing someone or asking for sexual favors or making a comment like "Women can't drive or whatever" is pretty clear.
But if I were a manager and "joe" was great at printer interfaces and "Jane" was great at UI and assigned work accordingly, would that be a problem?
Now, if "Jane" said, "Hey, I'd like to learn how to do printer interfaces, can I get assignments for that?" And I responded, "No, girls can't do printers." then OK I agree.
In my years, I've s
Re:Rife? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rife? (Score:4, Insightful)
Its the same issue - 238 complaints were made, therefore 238 complaints *have* to be acted upon regardless of evidence and damn you if you dismiss them.
237 complaints were dismissed - is there any evidence that they were incorrectly dismissed?
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Except its not getting further investigation, its getting "these women should see people being punished for the allegations against them" - its right there in the quote from the lawyer, "leading to a substantial number of incidents of alleged sexual harassment, and even several incidents of sexual assault, that often go unpunished."
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Of course the lawyer representing the women would say that. A lawyer's initial claim is not the same as a court judgment. To win the case, the lawyer is going to have to back up his or her claim with evidence.
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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.
We're approaching Satanic Panic -levels of frenzy, and the consequences may be just as dire, if not worse.
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Really the summary is talking about two things: what I agree is a rather low rate of accusations submitted to the particular unit in question (is that they only way they are handled?), and allegation of a culture which condones sexual harassment, without any evidence offered.
That second issue might well be real. I don't know, somebody ought to look into it. I'm a numbers guy myself, but that also means that I understand that numbers are only as good as the system you have for collecting them.
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Ohh you slippery PR=B$er. M$ does not have 124,000 managers and no Untermensch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. The majority of that number, by far the majority of that number are not managers. So the number you need to compare is 236 complaints against the total number of managers only. Not the numbers of untermensch, some of which, the bravest complain about the abuses of the Ãoebermensch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Those words are appropriate because it is definitely the way US corporations
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124,000 employees over various locations and departments. If all 238 complaints were from one campus or one department that would be terrible.
In any case, the volume of complaints makes it likely that there is an issue and should definitely be investigated.
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The volume of complaints is fuck all. I heard seven complaints from just one incident at a previous company, and had to track down the (sole) perpetrator to take action.
238 across that many employees across that many years? That's astonishingly low.
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Which strongly suggests that there's lots of cases that are not being reported. We don't know how many, but that invites investigation.
Re: Rife? (Score:2)
We hear this same claim over and over again - "For every report there are dozens and dozens of perfidious acts that go unreported!!!!!1!!1!!". Bullshit. The gig is up, no one is fooled any longer.
When anyone who has worked in America looks at their *first hand* observations - what you've actually seen among the people you've worked with - it's dramatically different from the semi-official narrative. For every one actual incidence of witchcraft, there are dozens and dozens of false accusations of witchcraft.
Idiots make thigns worse (Score:5, Insightful)
I have attended sexual harassment classes. They almost always make things worse.
The typical problem is described by the words "sexualized their male managers".
It indicates a huge abuse of the english language, and makes sexual harassment MORE likely, not less. A literal explanation of the meaning is "make sexual". That's simply not true - the men are not taking asexual creatures and making them more sexual.
Instead, the author is trying to say that the men have no respect for the women and are sexually harassing them. But instead of taking the time to say it clearly, they take a shortcut. But the short cut sounds STUPID to the target market. The evil men do not think their behavior is inappropriate and when you use this short cut, they do not understand what you are saying.
It's the liberal equivalent of saying "I have a black friend". It makes the speaker look stupid rather than convincing people of the truth.
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I have attended sexual harassment classes. They almost always make things worse.
Sexual harassment classes are not intended to prevent sexual harassment. They're intended to cover corporate's ass so when Manager Jim gets sued for sexual harassment, the company's lawyers can say "We here at Microsoft have a zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment, and every employee is given sexual harassment training certified by the National Board of Sexual Harassment Extortion. Jim completed this class once a year and ignored the fine, fine instruction so he's clearly at fault and we're blameless."
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It's a wonder that any women at Microsoft manged to keep their jobs at all during the 90's, what with the number of them that used to (allegedly) wear T-shirts emblazoned with 'slogans' like "Marry Me, Bill".
That poor guy put up with years of harassment... (*cough*)
Having said that, just to check - as you say you've been on harassment seminars: It would be considered wrong for guys in the office to wear hats / t-shirts /etc. asking their female coworkers or managers to marry them, right?
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Nothing like that came up at any harassment training I ever attended. You wouldn't want a supervisor wearing a T-shirt proposing to a subordinate, but this is not an exploitation of a power relationship. It would be necessary to establish that the T-shirts constituted a hostile env
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Internal complaints? really? (Score:3)
If you truly believe you have been the victim of "gender discrimination or sexual harassment" in the workplace there are people you can talk to about that in order to have it investigated and, perhaps, action taken. And these people don't work for Microsoft.
(EEOC and the Department of Labor, for a start)
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It is really important to keep changing the rules so we can label the women as always in the wrong.
If they do not go nuclear by hiring a lawyer and getting the feds involved, instead of attempting to work through company channels, we can cast doubt about whether they "truly believe" there is a problem.
If they do go nuclear, we can just call them disgruntled employers who never really stood up for themselves and tried to work things out like adults fit to live in the real world.
The women always lose. That i
Re:Internal complaints? really? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they do not go... If they do go...
Well, since it's impossible to please everyone, suggestions on both ends of the spectrum will inevitably be made, and you can use this logic to dismiss all of them as stemming from bigotry. All you have to do is pretend that the same people are making both arguments.
The women always lose. That is what is important.
Any statement you don't like is misogynistic. That is what is important.
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Or the third and much more reasonable option, which is to simply not get upset about women following the established procedure (manager, HR, employment regulators, police) and wait for the outcome of any investigation before passing judgement on her character and truthfulness.
I have to ask, did that simply not occur to you or are you deliberately ignoring it to make a straw man?
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I have to ask, did that simply not occur to you or are you deliberately ignoring it to make a straw man?
The only straw man I see here is yours:
the third and much more reasonable option
Other than not explicitly saying "do this after HR fails you" and instead saying "if you truly believe", that's exactly what willoughby suggested.
not get upset about women following the established procedure
Who got upset about that? Nobody, that's who.
passing judgement on her character and truthfulness
Comrade Ogilvy was the one passing judgement, and I only passed judgement on them in return. No one passed judgment on the people making HR complaints.
women ... her
Comrade Ogilvy was the person who decided to drag gender into the discussion. There was literally no mention of the complainant's g
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I have to ask, did that simply not occur to you or are you deliberately ignoring it to make a straw man?
The only straw man I see here is yours:
Or the third and much more reasonable option...
...was exactly what willoughby suggested, except that they stated "If you truly believe ..." rather than "If you've tried going through HR and still don't think that the issue is resolved, ...".
not get upset about women following the established procedure
Nobody is upset about that.
before passing judgement on her character and truthfulness
Nothing in willoughby's post nor mine passed judgment of any kind on the complainants.
women ... her
To their credit, willoughby's post was completely gender neutral. Someone else's was not.
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If willoughby offered the opinion that it is better to hire a lawyer, fine. The poster decided go for blaming the victim with this "truly believe" argument. Well...
I expect adults here to notice that women literally get lectured with diametrically opposing moral arguments. Oh, you didn't work hard enough to use channels, what a whiner. Or you didn't hire lawyers, you do not really believe yourself.
That different people say these things is not important. This dynamic is the overt moral context in which t
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If willoughby offered the opinion that it is better to hire a lawyer, fine. The poster decided go for blaming the victim with this "truly believe" argument.
That's not victim blaming. Nothing about "if you think you're a victim of X, you can do Y." suggests that you're to blame.
If you're going to whine about the single qualifying word ("truly"), that's just there to imply that you shouldn't do this on a vague guess, and that it's the thing you do after you go to HR.
Open your eyes, and step into the adult world like an adult, before lecturing with moralistic tones.
willoughby didn't use moralistic tones, but you did. That was the whole point of my post. You took a gender-neutral suggestion with no real judgement included and accused them of sexism. That's on
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And wouldn't the EEOC / Department of Labor expect you to have tried HR first?
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HR can be hostile to sexual harassment complaints, and given evidence of that I don't think the EEOC would require it.
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You got lucky then. It could've gone much much worse for you..
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
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Yeah, and my morning commute could have gone far worse for me. Lots of people get killed that way. Picking out individual worst cases is not usually helpful.
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Alex Jones is smarter than to question the holocaust. Dude will rant for hours on interdimensional psychic space vampire pedophiles, but Alex does not fuck with Jews.
Damn you, Clippy! (Score:2)
Damn you.
40 or fewer a year (Score:5, Interesting)
238/6 years is 40 a year.
Microsoft has 124,000 employees, 25.8% that are women.
So 31,992 women with 40 complaints a year. so .1% of female employees file a complaint each year. I suspect that is probably less than the industry norm.
Women are sexualized by males (Score:1)
Women are sexualized by males. Everywhere. All the time.
Re:Women are sexualized by males (Score:5, Insightful)
It happens to be hardwired in the male brain and it is the central reason the human race still exist. Expecting anything else is pretty stupid. Now, a decent male is polite about it and a decent female understands and forgives the occasional mistake. Decent people of either sex seem to be getting harder to come by though.
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My limited experience suggests that men sexualize women more than women sexualize men. So, if you were to tell me that, I'd ask for a source.
How to really cause "discussion" (Score:2)
I've seen women hitting on women subordinates, to the point where HR was needed to get involved. Think about that.
Now that's equality.... /s
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It didn't start a discussion though, did it? Because most people are intelligent enough to spot a what-about-ism argument, especially the classic "but women are just as bad!" one. And in reality literally no-one here thinks that women are always blameless and never do bad things, so aren't going to rush to argue with you.
this surprises someone? (Score:5, Informative)
How about we simplify this a bit... "'Women Are Sexualized By Men"
Focusing on some specific example is really pointless, isn't it? Women eye men, men eye women, that's how it works.
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Being treated sexually by a manager is considerably different than being treated sexually by a cow-orker. Look at the power relationships.
Adopt the traffic light system? (Score:3)
The Navy uses (used?) the traffic light system - so if she says 'Yellow light' it means that you are edging on the unacceptable and should tone it down, change topic or whatever as you're making her uncomfortable. 'Red light' means you are being completely unacceptable and you should stop and walk away. And of course, 'Green light' means that your advances are welcome and please proceed.
Navy Traffic Light System [nytimes.com]
Perhaps this would help simplify things as unsocial geeks may not see or understand non-verbal communication that indicates that the other person is uncomfortable with the interaction.
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It is your fucking responsibility to fuck responsibly. If you can't read non-verbal signals, ask. And try to make sure you're not intimidating the woman into not being forthright.
I thought puberty did it. (Score:2)
Who is left to be accused? (Score:2)
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White heterosexual conservative males, especially Christians, are still the world's whipping boy.
Is it okay to say "boy?" I'm so sorry if it's not.
Really? Two words that don's say sexualization... (Score:2)
Are "Micro" and "Soft"
Is Civil Rights Act counterproductive now? (Score:2)
Is seems that everyone is discriminating against everyone. How about we let women in Microsoft who feel sexualized and discriminated start their own software company? Call it Themyscirasoft. Find out if patriarchy is really getting you down. Same for black-only company, LGBTQ only company (won't you still have to deal with sexual harassment though?) and so on. You will obviously have to let straight white dudes also have their own company - can't expect them to give up working because others want their own
Milking the sexual cash cow? (Score:2)
Just say you were harassed or or discriminated against or "sexualized" and Ca-Ching!
Easiest money you could ever make.
Or maybe I'm just being cynical?
Feminism & Financialism (Score:1)
Have you ever wondered why Feminist organizations are so richly bankrolled by the global financial oligarchy and the various national intelligence services?
The various usury cabals fund Feminist causes as a divide and conquer tactic in their ongoing war against the global working class. Feminist ideology sets husband against wife, neighbor against neighbor, destroying families and communities wherever it goes. A divided society is a society that can be more easily robbed by bankers and similar parasites.
USI
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Why do you libs have to make everything about Donald Trump?
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By 2.86 million
if not for the EC....the will of the majority as in Just powers from the consent of the governed.
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Victims and "professional" victims, not SJWs. Specialized feminists infiltrators for targets "hard" to crack.
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That would be you (Score:5, Insightful)
> First poster to mention SJW gets smacked
That would be you.
> Nothing more ridiculous than fat, well-paid white men
The first person to make a racial comment - also you. The first person to disrepair and insult people based on their gender? You. Just put get it over with an put on your KKK hood already since you clearly have no shame about being a racist and a bigot.
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> Nothing more ridiculous than fat, well-paid white men complaining about other people asking to be treated fairly.
But it's okay for *you* to discriminate, and fat shame?
If you said that sort of thing about women, there would be outrage.
Now who is not treating people fairly?
Re: First poster to mention SJW gets smacked (Score:5, Informative)
"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 (Score:5, Insightful)
And because of that you're going to see a dramatic decrease in the number of women hired in tech.
Re: First poster to mention SJW gets smacked (Score:1)
Why is that only a problem when it affects women?
Nobody cares that men are often disincentived in joining fields like childhood education, and nursing. If we care about a gender not being given a fair shot at joining certain fields, let's apply those rules to *ALL* instances, not just certain ones that fit an ideological narrative while excluding other instances.
Re: First poster to mention SJW gets smacked (Score:4, Insightful)
I still think it's a terrible injustice that there are so few female garbage collectors. Where's the feminine outrage that driving garbage trucks is primarily a male-dominated job?
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I still think it's a terrible injustice that there are so few female garbage collectors. Where's the feminine outrage that driving garbage trucks is primarily a male-dominated job?
The old excuse was that far fewer women had the necessary upper body strength to manhandle full trashcans all day. (See what I did there?) But even that excuse is now gone, with garbage trucks equipped with robot dumpers [youtube.com]. Make way for the female garbage collectors! Liberté, égalité, fraternité! Woops, uh, Liberté, égalité, sororité!
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Actually, men are incentivized to take up nursing as a career. There are perennial complaints of too few male nurses. But of course, you are a knee-jerk asshole who never actually talked to a nurse.
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If there are complaints about not enough male nurses, then they are far quieter and far less numerous than the myriad of people filling the airwaves and internet with constant endless moaning about "inequality" in male dominated fields.
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You are almost right. They aren't a lot quieter, but the media isn't interested in promoting the issue. That is who is being quiet on the subject.
There is a significant amount of discrimination toward male nurses. Attitudes of "you can't trust them" with children or female patients. Those attitudes, by the way, are from both genders -- this isn't "women keeping the man down". So despite all of the incentives there are more female nurses than male. And yet, there are a lot of male doctors. And hospital admin
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Wrong. There's been plenty of programs to get more men into nursing, at least. I don't know about other female-dominated fields.
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I think the only significant cause of decreasing women in tech is destruction of the patriarchy (so to speak). The cultures where women are well-represented in tech (like China or India or the US until about 30 years ago) are very patriarchical, where fathers tell their daughters what job to have.
In more feminist cultures where women get to do whatever they want, it should be no surprise that tech is less attractive to women than it is to men. People have to get used to the idea that when given the choice,
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You gave a correlation. That doesn't imply causation. Moreover, US fathers did not tell their daughters what job to take about 1988.
One possibility is that patriarchal countries tend to impose codes of conduct that may stop bad behavior, so there's less informal discrimination and harassment. I don't think you really know what women will choose, given a level playing field.
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It is also interesting that anything less than preferential treatment is "discrimination" to evangelicals/white men.
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Well, I think it's interesting that so many guys like yourself feel threatened when a man questions a woman's accusation.
Almost like you've got something to prove to women in general. What a shame (about your feeling of impotence).
Re: t!ts and d!cks (Score:4, Insightful)
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Honestly, this lawsuit has little to no merit. 125000 employees and there are less than 300 complaints in total over 7 calendar years. That's not a systemic problem. It's a greedy lawyer hoping for a settlement... who forgot Bill Gates was at Harvard studying law.
What it probably is a a few bad managers. Let's face it, half of all managers are below average, and some much more so. Some of those are going to be douchebags. Where it will be Microsoft's problem is if they the issues were reported, and actionalble, but no action was taken.
Re: t!ts and d!cks (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit. If they're not reported how do you know?
You make it up. That's how.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Women go through tons makeup every year, have boob jobs, lipo and gym memberships to look good. But once a guy looks, he's sexually harassing her.
Total bullshit. You wanna look good? Fine, do it outside of the office. You wanna look good in the office? Fine, but don't complain if I enjoy the eye candy.
And don't get me wrong, if there is actual sexual harassment, the guy should be fired. But I've seen way too many crybabies
Re: (Score:1)
Easier solution is to split departments by sex like in sports or past century schools.
Then you can guarantee company gender parity rules, enforce objetive performance retribution and shoot dead in their tracks any intergender sexual discrimination complaints.
And as a bonus no more thermostat wars.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know that having uniforms really helps all that much. Sure it can cut out people dressing outside of the norms to some degree. However it doesn't do anything about some people filling out a uniform in much more appealing ways than others, or some people finding something arousing about practically anything. You could pretty rapidly end up at the point that everyone is wearing a burka, and I'd bet even then you'd still have some part of the group acting like lecherous idiots. The problem is in people
Re: t!ts and d!cks (Score:1)
My ghillie suit is going to see a lot more use at the office...
Re: (Score:2)
If there's money in it, why not?
Even if the money isn't direct. There is all sorts of preferential treatment that you can get by complaining.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.