Sacked Male Employees Sue Yahoo Alleging Bias

Discrimination against men – yes this happens too! Scott Ard, a former senior editorial director at Yahoo, who was terminated from the digital company on January 2015, filed a lawsuit in California's Northern District Court in San Jose recently claiming that a job review process implemented by Yahoo's Chief Executive Marissa Mayer illegally fires men to recruit more women in the company.

Ard targets one of the highest-profile Silicon Valley female executives, Mayer, saying the company violated federal civil rights and employment regulations.

Also read: Know in detail about the actual work that Mayer does here

Although, this is not the first case Yahoo is getting sued for. Likewise, Gregory Anderson, a former member of the editorial team, was fired in 2014 and filed his complaint in February of this year. Including Scott Ard’s case, two male ex-employees have filed lawsuits, alleging discrimination against them because of their gender.

On October 7, Yahoo spokeswoman, Carolyn Clark, issued a statement to Ars Technica in response to Ard’s suit:

"This lawsuit has no merit. 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. It also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out.”

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Ard’s complaint claims, "Yahoo's QPR Process permitted manipulation without oversight or accountability and was thus more arbitrary and discriminatory than the stack ranking used for a while by other employees." He adds, “Of the approximately 16 senior-level editorial employees hired or promoted by Savitt in approximately an 18-month period, 14 of them, or 87 per cent, were female.”

Apparently, Ard was fired due to his poor performance evaluations. However, a 2011 joinee, Ard maintained that he had received overall positive performance reviews and stock awards before Mayer pioneered a quarterly performance review (QPR) system that marked him a low ranker, which resulted in his termination.

Also read: Female leaders are as effective as male leaders

A survey says that Yahoo accounted for 9,400 employees in March. Both Ard and Anderson’s allegations report that two female senior staff members, Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt and Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo News Megan Liberman, were being employed based on a biased system and that Yahoo consistently promoted women in the company over men.

On the contrary, Yahoo diversity reports indicate exactly opposite of what Ard claims. The report mentions that women in leadership positions grew 1 per cent from 2014 to 2015.

Yahoo is accused of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and US Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification regulations.

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