Yahoo´s chief executive Marisa Mayer was sued this week in federal district court in San Jose by a former employee who was fired in 2015. The former employee accused her of leading a campaign against male employees to purge them from the company.
The lawsuit was made by the former editor-in-chief of CNET, Scott Ard, who worked at Yahoo as the editorial director for more than three years. He explained that when Mayer took the firm in 2012, she created an unfair employee performance-rating system that benefits the women and discriminates on the basis of gender together Megan Lieberman, who is the editor-in-chief of Yahoo News, and Kathy Savitt, former chief marketing officer.
A gender issue
In 2014 Scott Ard was replaced by a woman that was hired by Megan Lieberman, although Ard received a great performance review the same year, as reported by Gizmodo.
"When Savitt began at Yahoo the top managers reporting to her ... including the chief editors of the verticals and magazines, were less than 20% female. Within a year- and-a-half those top managers were more than 80% female. Savitt has publicly expressed support for increasing the number of women in media and has intentionally hired and promoted women because of their gender, while terminating, demoting or laying off male employees because of their gender. Of the approximately 16 senior-level editorial employees hired or promoted by Savitt ... in approximately an 18-month period, 14 of them, or 87%, were female," the lawsuit said.
Yahoo response
However, far from being a one-man war, Ard is not the only one suing this company, since former Yahoo Autos managing editor Gregory Anderson also filed a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination in Febraury 2016, according to IBT. Yahoo defends their position by explaining that Mayer have helped to improve the company´s quality, and that the performance-review process has improved their workers' efficiency.
"With the unwavering support of our CEO, we are focused on hiring employees with broad and varied backgrounds, and perspectives. Our performance-review process was developed to allow employees at all levels of the company to receive meaningful, regular and actionable feedback from others. Our performance-review process also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out, " Yahoo spokesperson Carolyn Clark told IBT.
