A class action lawsuit has been filed for women laid off by Twitter. The lawsuit claims that Musk's organization fired a far more significant percentage of its engineers and employees who are women than employees who are men. This is unsurprising based on the number of random misogynistic comments Twitter's reluctant new owner has made and the number of harassment suits and settlements made at his other beleaguered businesses.
Lead plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit are Miami-based Carolina Bernal Strifling, who worked at Twitter for seven years, and California-based Willow Wren Turkal, an engineer who joined Twitter in 2021 after four years at Facebook and LinkedIn. They're suing Twitter "on their own behalf and on behalf of other female Twitter employees across the country who have been discharged or constructively discharged from their jobs during the chaotic weeks since multi-billionaire Elon Musk purchased the company."
Their complaint cites calculations provided by Mark Killingsworth, an economics professor at Rutgers University, to allege that, overall, "57 percent of female employees were laid off on November 4, 2022, while 47 percent of male employees were laid off."
This disparity, the complaint alleges, "cannot be explained based upon a justification that Musk intended to retain more employees in engineering-related roles." Killingsworth estimated that Musk terminated 63 percent of female employees in engineering-related roles, compared to 48 percent of male employees in engineering-related roles.
