{"id":1685,"date":"2019-01-28T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T10:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2019-01-28T06:00:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T10:00:44","slug":"gender-bias-at-goldman-sachs-fired-for-taking-maternity-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/gender-bias-at-goldman-sachs-fired-for-taking-maternity-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Bias at Goldman Sachs: Fired for Taking Maternity Leave"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tA recent Los Angeles Times story<\/a> by Sabrina Willmer shines a light on the hypocrisy of many corporate family leave policies in the United States. Willmer explains that Goldman Sachs proudly promotes itself as a family-friendly company that offers four months of paid family leave as part of a widely publicized diversity initiative designed to attract talent. When women take maternity leave at Goldman, however, their careers are often damaged, and some have been fired using \u201cbusiness case\u201d justifications that do not align with their performances.\nGoldman Sachs is not the only company to offer a family-friendly policy and then punish women and men for using it. Stories like the one reported by Willmer are common in many other organizations as well. The case discussed below is one of many being litigated in a class-action gender bias lawsuit against Goldman Sachs based on complaints of reprisals when women took maternity leave.\nWillmer presents the case of Tania Mirchandani, a vice president and employee of fifteen years at Goldman Sachs in Los Angeles. When she reported to her supervisor, a father of four children, that she was pregnant with her third child, he expressed skepticism that she could balance the demands of her job with such a large family. Toward the end of her maternity leave, just before returning, her boss called to tell her she was terminated \u201cfor strategic business reasons\u201d and that men in the office were also being laid off to cut costs. In Mirchandani\u2019s gender bias complaint she states that, in fact, she was the only person cut in the Los Angeles office and male colleagues kept their jobs even though their performances were not as good as hers.\nMirchandani\u2019s experience is not unusual at Goldman Sachs, and other women have also report reprisal and pressure after maternity leave. Specifically, after maternity leave, many women at Goldman\n\n\n