- Sunday, 8 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
During the antitrust lawsuit, not everyone in our industry raced to support us - Steve 'Understatement' Ballmer
Dell accused of sexism
FOUR FORMER DELL managers are suing the firm for unfair discrimination against women, claiming the computer giant pays men more for equal work and doesn’t promote women to the highest positions. The class action suit also claims women were unfairly picked on in layoffs last year.
Mildred Chapman, Angela Hopkins, Julia Mahaffey and Bethany Riches, four former Dell HR execs, are accusing the firm of being nothing more than an "old boy network".
The suit also claims Dell layoffs in May 2007, which handed 8,800 souls their pink slips, unfairly targeted women and workers over 40. Also, over 80 per cent of Dell's upper management is male with no women in the company's highest tier of executives, the lawsuit whinges.
In a statement, the womens’ lawyer, Steven Wittels, notes "at Dell, it is an understatement to say that women face a glass ceiling; Dell's glass ceiling is made of concrete."
Included in the evidence is an email allegedly sent by Dell Veep, Michael Summers, to plaintiff Bethany Riches saying she shouldn't assume she's personally responsible if she had problems "breaking into arguably one of the toughest old boy networks". Its stops just short of adding that she shouldn’t worry her pretty little head about it.
Riches also reckons she and her sisterhood at Dell were repeatedly denied promised promotions.
Mildred Chapman tells a similar tale of woe, saying she was denied promotions and pay increases again and again, despite having more responsibilities than her younger male directors, who probably never even washed up their own plates. To add insult to injury, Chapman was laid off from Dell in April.
Each of the four women reckon they’ve lost over $1 million in salary and benefits thanks to Dell's alleged sexist discrimination, money they now hope to extract from Dell’s deep pockets, or company credit card. But Dell spinner David Frink told the Washington Post the lawsuit was "without merit". After all, women, bah, what do they know about these complex legal things?
Dell is very careful about presenting itself as a diverse company to the outside world, with its website even boasting a diversity page which claims over half of the company's employees are women or minorities. The page goes on to say that a full third of the company's workforce are women – although it doesn’t mention if any of these happen to be kitchen staff - and 32 percent of the company's US veeps are women or minorities, apparently.
Dell even boasts having won awards for its diversity programmes.
So Dell’s response seems to be something along the lines of “quit sniveling already, women, get in the kitchen and make us some pie… direct on-demand”. µ
L'Inq
Washington Post
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Come on enough with the poor helpless female routine always someones else's fault.

Woman or man a valuable employee advances, troublesome ones are discarded.The business world, it's a pitiless master.

time to look in the mirror for more than just bad makeup and own up to their own shortcomings.
"Each of the four women reckon they’ve lost over $1 million in salary and benefits thanks to Dell's alleged sexist discrimination" 

Really? They're HR execs for crying out loud. Anyone working in HR is already overpaid and should just keep quiet before people notice them and start asking what they do...
...if this didn't happen at most companies regardless of gender. I do twice the amount as my co-workers and even some other bosses but I get paid far less and do not get title changes. Of course, I can't sue, because I happen to have a frank and beans.

In short, get over it. That's life.


they best get in line then behind all the other 'minorities' and their wives and dogs that have been affected lol, ffs when are these 'hard done by' so called minorities gonna admit to themselves that they just dont have what it takes to get what they want on merit, male or female, black, white or cosmic purple, makes no difference, nor should it :O)

now as regards whether DELL 'plays fair' is another story all together O_o
Just checking Dell's web site and I noted that they do have two women on their Board of Directors.
Back in the early days of Dell, when I lived in Austin and did a stint at the Dell plant, it was well known that in order for a woman to get hired at Dell the main qualification she had to have was...huge...er...tracts of land, so to speak. 

Women of diminished chest size were rare as hens teeth on Dell property, but those who could float well were everywhere. Not sure if things have changed or not.
"In a statement, the womens’ lawyer, Steven Wittels, notes "at Dell, it is an understatement to say that women face a glass ceiling; Dell's glass ceiling is made of concrete.""

Am I the only one bothered by the idea of an understating metaphor, not to mention the nonsensical "concrete glass ceiling"?

Aren't lawyers supposed to be good at that kind of thing?
Star Trec IV had transparent aluminum, now we have glass concrete ceelings. Sweet!
Lets just face the facts here:
When it comes to computers women simply suck. They cannot advance because they are simply not worth it. 4 years at university, now working on my MSc I have only seen 4 women in total in I.T and all 4 sucked big time. They could not grasp basic programming concepts, they could not understand basic hardware and they were hopeless when it came to project management. They could however fill up their 512MB RAM laptop with all the crap you can possibly imagine running at once. Or is this just my experience? How many women do we have in our industry? About as many as you have in engineering or astrophysics etc etc. I wonder why...
frank frank frank.

you gotta finish up your schooling and get out into the real world. here at a large domestic IT outsourcer, 4 of my 5 managers have been women, my direct senior is a woman, 5 of my 23 colleagues in the group are women, and to say to they all suck at tech because of the 4 women YOU have personally met is pretty poor analysis. engineering hardware and developing code are NOT the only jobs in tech-you'd do well to remember that, as the hatred you're going to engender building crap apps and shoddy software that has to be troubleshot by female techworkers is gonna be pretty high. 
But the real thing in this particular case is that these are HR people. there's only so far they can actually GO before they have to change their whole profession. Examine it more carefully-are there really that many engineers that have gone up to CIO and CEO? No, they moved up a bit and some of them stayed inventing things and the ones who did go up then had to go get MBAs. My company is definitely a meritocracy-Dell doesn't appear to be. this is too specific a situation to get a way with dismissing these people's case with "i know 4 people and they suck..." You can't really use that women suck at tech thing because they weren't tech workers. they were HR.
I was made redundant this year from Dell, its about time the "old boys club" came to light and the truth be told.