{"id":43937,"date":"2023-10-20T15:32:15","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/ubers-dismissive-treatment-of-employees-sexism-claims-is-all-too-typical-in-the-sector-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:32:15","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:32:15","slug":"ubers-dismissive-treatment-of-employees-sexism-claims-is-all-too-typical-in-the-sector-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/ubers-dismissive-treatment-of-employees-sexism-claims-is-all-too-typical-in-the-sector-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber’s dismissive treatment of employee’s sexism claims is all too typical in the sector – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Uber
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Uber has suffered a spate of bad publicity in recent days after allegations of harassment and discrimination from a former software engineer.<\/p>\n

In a blog post, Susan Fowler described being propositioned by her supervisor within weeks of starting her job.<\/p>\n

She complained to the human resources (HR) team. According to Fowler, the supervisor received a \u201cwarning and a stern talking-to\u201d but no other discipline at the time because he was a strong performer and it was his \u201cfirst offense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uber then offered her a choice: Transfer to another team or stay and risk a retaliatory performance review from the harasser.<\/p>\n

Fowler also described a larger pattern of harassment, discrimination and retaliation. Others reported being harassed by the same manager, apparently contradicting what HR told her.<\/p>\n

Fowler\u2019s performance review was downgraded, making her ineligible for a subsidised graduate program. When Fowler asked a director about \u201cdwindling\u201d representation of women in the division, he attributed it to their failure to step up and be better engineers.<\/p>\n

When Uber ordered leather jackets for engineers, they were ordered only for men. Apparently, there weren\u2019t enough women to qualify for a bulk discount.<\/p>\n

Fowler complained repeatedly. HR responded with escalating indifference, ultimately suggesting that Fowler herself was the problem.<\/p>\n

After Fowler\u2019s post went viral, Uber sought to distance itself from the incident and hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate. CEO Travis Kalanick issued a response:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhat she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Fowler\u2019s story \u2013 which Uber neither confirmed nor denied \u2013 is not unique in the tech sector, where women remain underrepresented.<\/p>\n

Women make up only 12% of engineers. These women face substantial headwinds.<\/p>\n

In a survey of women in the tech sector, 84% reported being told they were \u201ctoo aggressive\u201d and 59% said they were offered fewer opportunities than male counterparts.<\/p>\n

The majority also reported receiving unwanted sexual advances. And of those that reported the harassment, 60% were unhappy with the company\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

The Uber story provides a window into how companies have developed HR infrastructure to address anti-discrimination laws. These structures occupy a marginalised status within organisations.<\/p>\n

As I learned while working as an employment lawyer at a large law firm, legal mandates rarely disrupt business objectives.<\/p>\n

Instead, they are largely viewed as an inconvenience delegated to HR. That explains, for example, why the CEO learned about Fowler\u2019s allegations only after they went viral.<\/p>\n

Symbolic structures<\/h3>\n

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act safeguards an employee\u2019s right to equal opportunity in the workplace.<\/p>\n

It initially protected an employee against discrimination in hiring, pay, promotion and termination. Courts later expanded definitions of discrimination to include harassment. Title VII also protects employees from retaliation for complaining about discrimination or harassment.<\/p>\n

As sociologist Lauren Edelman documents in a recent book, employers responded to civil rights laws by setting up complaint processes for employees. She argues that these processes are less focused on meaningfully assuring equal opportunity and more about creating the appearance of compliance.<\/p>\n

The \u2018first bite is free\u2019<\/h3>\n

According to Edelman, courts have become complicit in this development, crediting employers for superficial procedures without assessing whether they actually work.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Faragher v. City of Boca Raton is a case in point.<\/p>\n

The case gives employers a defence in harassment cases if they took reasonable measures to prevent and correct harassment and the victim unreasonably failed to make use of internal complaint mechanisms.<\/p>\n

However, courts don\u2019t require employers to do very much to satisfy the defence. Merely adopting and distributing a policy gets an employer credit, as does adopting an investigation process.<\/p>\n

Courts do not require employers to take strong disciplinary action against the harasser. Rather, they need only take action reasonably calculated to stop the harassment \u2013 even if it does not.<\/p>\n

In theory, a plaintiff would still have a viable claim if they used the employer\u2019s complaint procedure. But one empirical study found that even short delays in reporting the harassment can be considered \u201cunreasonable\u201d on the victim\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

So if a victim waits a few months to report the harassment, and the employer goes through the motions of investigating and responding, the victim may be out of luck.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t give employers much of an incentive to crack down on harassment. As one scholar observed, it essentially allows employers to escape liability for a harasser\u2019s first offence. In other words, the \u201cfirst bite is free.\u201d<\/p>\n

This helps to explain Uber\u2019s underwhelming response to Fowler\u2019s initial complaint.<\/p>\n

Uber wasn\u2019t really on the hook for the \u201cfirst report\u201d and did not have a strong incentive to punish the harasser. For Fowler\u2019s harasser, that meant a \u201cwarning and a stern talking-to.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a \u2018business decision\u2019<\/h3>\n

Lauren Edelman\u2019s research also documented a tendency among HR and lawyers to characterise civil rights obligations as \u201clegal risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is consistent with how I talked to employers when I worked as an employment lawyer. I offered advice on \u201clegal risks\u201d while they were tasked with making \u201cbusiness decisions\u201d on how to proceed.<\/p>\n

However, this frame ultimately treats legal rules as one of many factors to take into account (or ignore) when employers make important decisions.<\/p>\n

Consider Fowler\u2019s situation. Uber evidently considered Fowler\u2019s harasser to be an economically valuable employee that might be difficult to replace.<\/p>\n

Transferring the harasser to another team or terminating his employment likely would have been costly. By contrast, offering Fowler a transfer seemed a cheaper alternative, notwithstanding its effect on Fowler and the increased litigation risk.<\/p>\n

When framed as a business decision, companies have a tendency to displace the victim of the harassment to preserve the profits associated with a high-flying harasser.<\/p>\n

Swatting mosquitoes while ignoring the termites<\/h3>\n

Fowler\u2019s allegations of sexual harassment have received a lot of press attention, but in many ways her allegations of systemic discrimination and retaliation were more troubling.<\/p>\n

The director\u2019s comment that women weren\u2019t stepping up. The altered performance evaluation that cost Fowler a spot at grad school. The leather jackets.<\/p>\n

HR was even less responsive to these complaints than to the harassment allegations and blamed the problem on Fowler herself.<\/p>\n

Why? They may not have believed her.<\/p>\n

But HR may have been limited in its capacity to fix the underlying problem. Yes, it could have paid for the leather jackets, addressed the doctored performance evaluations or scolded the director for his sexist comment.<\/p>\n

But HR, on its own, is poorly situated to fix a business culture that is indifferent to (or in denial about) offering meaningful opportunities for advancement to women or other minorities in the workplace.<\/p>\n

As political scientist Frank Dobbin has argued, human resources professionals have long struggled to establish their legitimacy within organisations. They are rarely the locus of power within corporations, which instead resides in revenue-generating departments like engineering and sales, and in the executives that preside over the business.<\/p>\n

HR advises. Business decides.<\/p>\n

Rooting out discrimination<\/h3>\n

Business leaders make a Faustian bargain when they outsource civil rights compliance to HR and lawyers. They gain credible symbols of compliance.<\/p>\n

But they also lose touch with a business identity that includes doing right by their employees. As Mary Gentile argues in her book, \u201cGiving Voice to Values,\u201d we lose touch with our shared values when we define work roles too narrowly.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, Uber\u2019s decision to side with the harasser over Fowler was a bad business move. All the bad press has reinforced existing narratives of Uber as a bad actor. But the decision was also \u2013 to use a word that has fallen out of favor in the business vernacular \u2013 wrong.<\/p>\n

Until business leaders view themselves as guardians of civil rights, those rights will continue to be framed as a tax on profits rather than important values to uphold.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth C. Tippett is an Assistant Professor at the School of Law, University of Oregon. <\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter, LinkedIn and iTunes.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Uber has suffered a spate of bad publicity in recent days after allegations of harassment and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}