The class-action gender discrimination lawsuit against the PlayStation brand has now taken major turn. According to Stephen Totilo from Axios, eight women have now come forward and accused the company of alleged gender discrimination. Stephen Noel Ilg, the lawyer of Emma Majo and the one who filed the suit late last year, filed new paperwork this week with statements that back up the claims and offer full support for the class-action lawsuit to move forward. The accusations include “demeaning comments, unwelcome advances, a lack of attention paid to their work or ideas and, most frequently, a sense that it was harder for women to be promoted in the company.”
According to Axios, one of the women who spoke up, Marie Harrington who was employed for 16 years, advised that there allegedly was a concerning lack of women who were considered for moving up through the company. She also stated that this process was allegedly known as “calibration sessions.” Harrington mentioned one session in particular allegedly only had four women up for promotion consideration while there were roughly 70 men. Harrington also apparently addressed this issue in 2018 by emailing her superiors with a New York Times news article about women revolting against toxic environment at Nike. She also stated in that email, “Can we address this before PlayStation has its own national news article?”
Kara Johnson, a former program manager, stated that “I believe Sony is not equipped to appropriately handle toxic environments.” She also stated that there were allegedly ten women who left her workspace sometime before she departed as well. Johnson also made statements that she attempted to notify her superiors about the alleged ongoing gender discrimination against pregnant women, as well as allegedly resisting advances from someone in human recourses.
It’s also important to note that Sony actually asked the court to dismiss the initial class action lawsuit attempt made by Majo just last month. Their reasoning for the dismissal request was due to a lack of information regarding “widespread intentional discrimination.” On top of that, due to the new filings, a deadline was met in which Majo and/or their lawyer needed to reply to Sony’s attempt to drop the suit in order to continue the progression to make it into a full class-action suit. A full hearing for this request more than likely won’t happen until sometime next month at the earliest.
Unfortunately, Sony is only the newest in a long line of companies being accused of some form of discrimination or harassment. Riot Games recently settled and agreed to pay $100 million for gender discrimination lawsuit that began back in 2018, while Activision Blizzard is currently going through massive sexual harassment and workplace allegations suit.