Gender Discrimination Lawsuit Against Microsoft By Dan Atkerson on September 28, 2015

Former employee Katie Moussouris has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against Microsoft. The class-action suit alleges that Moussouris and a number of other women were treated unfairly during their employment, being looked over for promotions and pay raises as well as receiving more critical performance reviews.

Moussouris was relatively well-known for having been a heavy supporter of the “bug bounty program” in 2013; eventually becoming one of the more instrumental people involved in getting it launched. The program was hugely beneficial to everyone, as it allowed for anyone to be paid for discovering and reporting vulnerable computer security points.

Recently, Moussouris resigned her job at Microsoft in favor of a chief policy officer position with HackerOne, a third-party company that helps corporations manage their own bug bounty programs.

Following her departure from the computer giant, Moussouris had more than one thing to say about the allegedly widespread and long-running gender discrimination happening within the company. She stated that over the course of her seven years employed with Microsoft she experienced "systemic and pervasive discrimination ... with respect to performance evaluations, pay, promotions, and other terms and conditions of employment."

The suit also claims that the head of the Trusted Computing Group, the department that Moussouris worked in, had been found to be sexually harassing women under him, the only disciplinary action taken against him was to move him to another department, where he was promptly promoted to a senior director position.

Microsoft’s only response to Moussouris’ allegations is as follows:

We're committed to a diverse workforce, and to a workplace where all employees have the chance to succeed. We've previously reviewed the plaintiff's allegations about her specific experience and did not find anything to substantiate those claims, and we will carefully review this new complaint.

Atkerson Law Firm – Dallas employment lawyer