A former Sony IT security analyst has filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the company through the State of California, as first reported by Axios. The former employee claims that women at Sony aren’t compensated equally to male employees and that they’re subjected to various discriminatory practices.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Emma Majo, joined Sony in 2015 and alleges that directors and managers such as Yu Sugita would “not be alone in a room with a female with the door closed” and would ignore her completely if in a room with a male colleague. Majo said she had to send requests for things to be done through a male employee to not be ignored, even if it came through a male intern, despite her employee status.
Additionally, Majo said in the lawsuit that she and other female employees were consistently denied promotion opportunities and equal compensation compared to male employees with similar titles and classifications. She claims that when she submitted a statement about gender bias to Sony, she received a letter soon after that she was being terminated. Sony, according to the lawsuit, said it was because it was eliminating a certain department, but Majo says she wasn’t even a member of that department.
Majo is also seeking to upgrade the lawsuit into a class-action suit on behalf of the other women at Sony she alleges have been mistreated.
This lawsuit comes in the wake of a Wall Street Journal article that reported that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was aware of several sexual harassment claims that led to a California Department of Fair Employment and Housing lawsuit in July. Sony’s PlayStation chief Jim Ryan recently joined Xbox’s Phil Spencer in calling out Kotick and Activision’s actions in letters to their respective staff.
