SAN FRANCISCO – In April, Françoise Brougher, the chief operating officer of Pinterest and her top female executive company, abruptly left the company with little explanation.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Ms. Brougher accused the $ 21 billion company that makes virtual pinboards of dismissing her after she complained about sexist treatment. In her suit, which was filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Ms. Brougher said she stayed out of important meetings, received gender feedback, was paid less than her male peers when she joined the company, and was eventually released for it. talk about.
“Gender discrimination in the C-level suite may be a little more subtle, but it’s very forgettable and real,” said Ms. Brougher, 54, in an interview. ‘When men speak, they are rewarded. When women express themselves, they are fired. ”
Pinterest was the lawsuit filed, a company spokeswoman said. “Our employees are incredibly important to us,” she said, adding that the company is committed to promoting its culture so that “all of our employees feel included and supported.” Pinterest is conducting an independent review of its culture, policies and practices, she added.
Ms. Brougher has been one of the most prominent female tech executives to file a gender discrimination case against her former employer since venture capitalist Ellen Pao sued her company, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in 2012. Silicon Valley has persisted, even after tech’s culture of sexual harassment of female performers and entrepreneurs became part of the #MeToo movement.
The lawsuit of Ms. Brougher is following a lawsuit over gender discrimination last month against Carta, a startup of financial technology, by its former vice president of marketing, Emily Kramer. Ms. Kramer accused Carta of paying her less than her male peers and said the company took revenge against her for speaking out about equality and gender diversity.
A spokeswoman for Carta said: “Gender inequality in the workplace is a real and systemic issue, particularly in Silicon Valley, however, the allegations in this case are unfounded.”
It pak Ms. Brougher adds to the control of Pinterest, which has a large audience of female users. In recent months, the San Francisco-based company has also been criticized by some of its former Black employees for racial discrimination. In June, two of them, Ifeoma Ozoma en Aerica Shimizu Banks, tweeted about racist and sexist remarks, paid inequality and revenge when they experienced it at the company. They close in May.
Mrs. Brougher is well known in Silicon Valley. She previously led the business side of financial technology company Square and worked in a variety of positions at Google’s advertising company. She joined Pinterest in 2018 as chief operating officer and was responsible for the company’s turnover, with roughly half of the 2,000 employees reporting her.
When Pinterest filed for release in 2019, Ms. Brougher learned that she was paid less than her male peers and that her stock was “backloaded,” meaning most of them were earned after several years, while their executive male peers were not, according to the lawsuit. After complaints, her compensation was adjusted.
Ms Brougher said she was not invited to the “roadshow” to talk to investors about Pinterest’s first public offering. She was also not invited to board meetings after the company went public, although members of her team were sometimes invited to those meetings without her knowledge, the court said. (She was not a member of the board.)
Ms Brougher described a culture of ‘constant exclusion’, where decisions were often made in unofficial capacity, as ‘the meeting after the meeting.’
“If you are hired as No. 2, you are expected to advise the CEO,” she said. “But if you are not in the meeting where the decisions are made and do not have the context, it makes your task harder.”
Ms Brougher said that the chief financial officer of Pinterest, Todd Morgenfeld, asked her at one point, “What is your job anyway?” for the peers, according to the lawsuit. Mr Morgenfeld also offered Mrs Brougher formal feedback that she considered sexist, according to the lawsuit. When she confronted him about it on a video call, he raised his voice and hung on to it, the suit said.
Ben Silbermann, chief executive of Pinterest, denied Ms. Brougher’s concerns about Mr. Morgenfeld, comparing it to a domestic dispute, according to the suit. Human resources treated the complaint as a legal matter, the suit said.
In April, shortly after the heated conversation with Mr. Morgenfeld, Mrs. Brougher was terminated, according to the suit.
“I was told I was not cooperating enough,” she said. Pinterest asked her to announce that leaving was her decision and she refused, she said.
Mrs Brougher’s law firm, Rudy, Exelrod, Zieff & Lowe, also represented Mrs Pao.
