Microsoft Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Investigation

Proposed Lawsuit against Microsoft

According to the New York Post, a filing in the proposed class action listed 238 internal complaints made by women at Microsoft reporting gender discrimination or sexual harassment between 2010 and 2016. Among these complaints were allegations that a woman was asked by a male coworker why she was “dressed like a whore”, and that a man had groped four different women during a work function.

The proposed class action suit, which would have allowed over 8,600 women to potentially receive damages from the company, was halted by a federal judge in November of 2020.

The New York Post further states that after the suit was blocked, Microsoft released a statement saying that it had a “fair and robust system in place to investigate employee concerns and take appropriate action when necessary”. However only one of the 118 gender discrimination complaints were deemed “founded” by the company, according to the unsealed court documents.

Sexual Harassment documented in email chain by Female Microsoft Employees

In 2019, an article was released by Quartz reporting on an internal email chain where female employees documented their stories of sexual harassment and discrimination while working for Microsoft, including one woman who alleged that during a business trip, a male employee threatened to kill her if she did not perform certain sexual acts. When she alerted HR and her management team, her male manager told her that “it sounded like he was just flirting”, and that she should “get over it”. This was just one of many allegations of harassment and abuse included in over 90 pages of emails on the chain.