Girl Power: Former Employee Drags Twitter To Court Over Gender Discrimination

A former female software engineer at Twitter is suing the organization allegedly on grounds of a secretive promotion process that favours the male employees. According to Tina Huang, the engineer, Twitter would send alerts of job openings and promotion opportunities to certain people and kept women out of the loop.

One day, after a former employee of Facebook alleged that Mark Zuckerberg’s company was a hotbed of gender bias and discrimination, Tina Huang from Twitter took a cue and filed her proposed class-action lawsuit in California USA and just like a chain reaction of sorts, a woman named Ellen Pao who sued a venture capital firm Klein Perkins Caulified & Byers for $16m had the court rule in favour of her seeking punitive damages if the jury’s decision is in her favour. She also claimed that the firm retaliated against her after she reported pervasive sexual discrimination.

According to statistics from search engine Google, Twitter, Facebook, etcetera, an average of 70% staff are male and are white and this stat coupled with the insinuation that it’s a man’s world have stirred heated debates and arguments and now, ultimately, lawsuits. Social media, Facebook and Twitter are the latest to be hit with allegations and accusations bordered on gender bias and discrimination.

The most recent from Twitter’s former employee, Tina Huang’s lawsuit alleges that Twitter has no formal job application or promotion process. A claim the management of the billion dollar social networking site has disputed saying Huang resigned voluntarily from Twitter, after the leadership tried to persuade her to stay. “She was not fired. Twitter is deeply committed to a diverse and supportive workplace, and we believe the facts will show Ms. Huang was treated fairly.”

Huang is reportedly urging “all current and former female employees of Twitter denied promotions in the three years prior to the filing of this complaint” to join her as she battles the organization in court.

Portions of the lawsuit read; “Promotion into Twitter’s senior technical positions is based on subjective judgments, by committees that are comprised of and dependent on upper management at Twitter, and predominantly male. These judgments are tainted with conscious or unconscious prejudices and gender-based stereotypes, which explains why so few women employees at Twitter advance to senior and leadership positions.”

Editor’s note: These are serious allegations. Allegations that actually make me realize that committees do not only belong in government. Allegations that make me appreciate appraisals some Nigerian companies do. Same allegations make me wonder why nothing is done after an employee has been appraised. Allegations that make me holler ‘Amen’ when someone testifies at church that the person sitting on his/her promotion for 5-7-10 years has been removed.