Woman Sues California Tech Company for Wrongful Termination

Even after decades of gaining ground in the workforce, women continue to suffer discrimination and harassment in the workplace. As a result, they often do not make the same wages as their male counterparts and are assigned tasks beneath their positions despite their qualifications. California’s tech industry has seen numerous allegations of discrimination based on age, gender and other factors in recent history, and some of those circumstances resulted in legal action for wrongful termination.

One of the most recent involves a woman who claims a California tech company fired her for speaking out and complaining about gender discrimination. She says the company hired her as a product developer and in March 2017 became a manager of a data glove project. Despite her qualifications, job title and managerial position, she was assigned to sew the gloves along with another woman, whose job title was a hardware engineer.

Eventually, the woman was assigned to sewing 100 percent of the time. She says she filed a complaint with the company in writing and her superiors told her to quit complaining. She goes on to claim that she was then fired after additional complaints that the company underutilized women working for the company. The CEO of the company denies the woman made any such complaints.

It will be up to the courts to determine whether this woman was the victim of wrongful termination. Other workers who believe they do not receive fair treatment based on their gender could do the same. Federal and state law protect women from experiencing harassment, retaliation and termination based on their gender, and the more women who come forward, the greater the chances are that this type of discrimination could cease.