Two women who lost their jobs after Elon Musk officially took over Twitter have sued the company.
According to the former employees, the layoffs disproportionately affected female employees. This means that the layoff was specifically targeted at mostly the female workers in the company.
The world’s richest person had immediately fired the top executives at Twitter when he took over in October, and after a week, fired about half the company’s 7,500 staff members.
The reported firings had come with the news that Musk had planned to terminate almost 75% of Twitter’s staff to reduce the company’s debt. However, Musk dismissed those reports, saying that he would not cut such a large portion of the staff.
Twitter has regardless, been accused by the two plaintiffs of violating both the federal and California laws that banned sex discrimination in the workplace.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, remarked that women at the company had been specifically targeted since the billionaire finally closed his deal for Twitter after months of trying to get out of it.
The gender gap is reported to have been even higher for women in engineering-related roles with 63 % laid off, compared with 47% of men.
