Google in Trouble Again! Female Employee Files Lawsuit Against 'Bro Culture' That Encourages Sexual Harassment of Women
Earlier this month, Loretta Lee accused Google of having a "bro-culture" that was hostile to women. Lee added saying that the company just did little to address the problem.
Washington, March 1: Tech giant Google’s ‘bro-culture’ has again got the company into trouble. A new lawsuit from a female software engineer alleges that she was a frequent target of regular sexual harassment during her seven years at the company. Earlier this month, Loretta Lee- the victim accused Google of having a "bro-culture" that was hostile to women.
In the complaint, which was first published by Gizmodo, Lee, who worked for Google from 2008 to 2016, filed suit against Google for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and wrongful termination in California state court.
In her complaint Lee said that the Mountain View company did too little to address the problem. The victim alleged that she was subject to “lewd comments, pranks and even physical violence” on a daily basis. Reports by Gizmodo said she also complained that she had male colleagues who spiked her drinks with alcohol, shoot Nerf balls at her, send her sexually suggestive messages and, in one case, slap her in the face.
An incident mentioned in Lee’s lawsuit was quoted by Gizmodo saying that Lee found a male coworker hiding under her desk when she returned after a short break. He refused to say what he was doing, the lawsuit says. “The incident with the co-worker under her desk unnerved her. Plaintiff [Lee] had never spoken to that co-worker before. She was frightened by his comment and believed he may have installed some type of camera or similar device under her desk,” the lawsuit stated.
Last year, Google fired engineer James Damore after he wrote a controversial memo arguing that the under-representation of women at the company might be due to women's lack of interest in computer programming. Reports also said that Tim Chevalier, a former Google engineer, sued the company for discrimination, harassment, and wrongful termination. Tim was fired for internal message board posts that advocated diversity at the company.
As per reports, Damore responded by suing Google for allegedly discriminating against men. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had planned to hold a town hall meeting to address the situation. However, the town hall was canceled and never rescheduled.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 01, 2018 08:08 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).