In November 2021 A class action lawsuit has been filed against PlayStation “Pay gap, wrongful termination and other instances of gender discrimination” at the company’s California offices. Sony has since tried to drop the case, but now more women have come forward with their own stories.
as axios reportAlthough the case was originally filed by a former employee, Sony are attempting to dismiss the case — with the company saying it “has not identified a single policy, practice or procedure.” [PlayStation] alleged to have formed the basis of widespread willful discrimination or had a discriminatory effect on women” – have instead resulted in a number of other women adding their names and experiences to the complaint.
Some of their stories include “a letter [one worker] shared with female employees when she left the company in January, citing repeated attempts to inform supervisors about gender bias, alleged discrimination against pregnant women and a refusal by a senior human resources man to act on those accounts,” the fact that a former employee was among 11 women to quit from just one office in four months, and a former programmer who writes, “I don’t think Sony is equipped to deal appropriately with toxic environments.”
as igamesnews reportOther testimonies include those of Sony Interactive’s former Senior Director, Marie Harrington:
Harrington also said men at Sony would rate female employees on their “hotness” and pass around “dirty jokes and pictures of women.” She also described a case where an engineer asked her not to wear skirts to work “because it distracted him,” and claimed male engineers went to strip clubs and shared porn during lunch.
In another incident, Harrington says she asked for a private breastfeeding room after giving birth to twins in 2005. She had to use a “storage room with a broken lock just off the entrance hall.” Harrington wrote that she stopped breastfeeding early “because it wasn’t sustainable under these conditions.”
The testimony of the eight women was added to the original lawsuit filed by Emma Majo in November 2021. axios says that “yesterday’s filing met a deadline for responses to Sony’s attempt to drop the lawsuit” and that a subsequent hearing “will not take place until next month at the earliest.”
We reached out to Sony for comment.
