Court filings made public on Monday have revealed that Microsoft’s HR department saw 238 complaints alleging incidents of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation or pregnancy discrimination in the six-year period between 2010 and 2016.

As first reported by The Seattle Times, 118 complaints were related to counts of gender discrimination, but Microsoft’s investigating team considered 117 of them to be unfounded, stating that in each of these cases, they couldn’t identify any violations of company policy. Another 108 complaints alleged sexual harassment in some form, 15 of which were deemed to be “founded” by Microsoft.

Microsoft headquarters, Cologne
Microsoft headquarters, Cologne – Wikimedia Commons/Pixabay

#MicrosoftToo

As of 2015, three women, either former or current Microsoft employees, filed lawsuits against the software giant, claiming the company had engaged in systemic gender discrimination against women in engineering jobs, bringing the complaints into the public eye. The women allege that the company’s actions have translated into lower pay and fewer promotions for women, compared to their male counterparts.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys have applied for a class action lawsuit, which would add more than 8,600 individual claims to the case. Class action would allow them to defend the position that women occupying technical roles at Microsoft lost out on up to $238m in wage increases and 500 promotions due to intrinsic bias against female employees.

The company, however, says that a class action lawsuit is not called for, as no common cause can be identified between the plaintiffs, stating that its internal investigation system is both “fair and robust.” The company claims that corrective action may have been taken even in cases when policy was not violated, and that in such cases complainants may not have been informed.

The case is unfolding amidst a wave of accusations over the past two years, which has taken the world’s entertainment and political circles by storm.

With a high number of stories on social media, women have felt encouraged to report and publicize incidents of gender discrimination at work, and technology companies have had their share of controversy.

A notable case is that of Uber, where 47 cases of sexual harassment were reported since the company was founded in 2009, culminating in a series of dismissals and causing the company’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, to resign.

A number of complaints have also been filed by female employees at Google, Twitter, and indeed, Microsoft.

In Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley, Bloomberg broadcast journalist Emily Chang’s account of gender disparity in the technology industry, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged that his company still has “a long way to go” to fix what is currently a scarcity of women in technical roles. And indeed, as of 2017, women occupied only 19 percent of the company’s technical positions, and were responsible for 25 percent of its total workforce. Nadella stated that the “current conversation” demanding more equality was “the best thing that can happen in this industry.”