Two women who lost their jobs at Twitter during newly minted CEO Elon Musk's staff purge are now suing the billionaire, accusing him and the social media company of disproportionately targeting female employees for layoffs.

On Wednesday former employees Carolina Bernal Strifling and Willow Wren Turkal filed a lawsuit on behalf of themselves and "other female Twitter employees across the country."

The proposed class action lawsuit alleges that after Twitter was taken over by Musk, the company laid off 57% of its female workers, compared to 47% of their male counterparts.

"Not only is this a large percentage difference, but it is also extremely statistically significant," the lawsuit stated.

Twitter released nearly 3,700 employees in early November, a cost-cutting move by Musk that was soon followed by the resignation of hundreds of Twitter staff.

Musk has regularly battled controversy since his October acquisition of the social media giant, and this is just the latest to stem from his purging of nearly half of Twitter's workforce.

Musk's rule of Twitter has been marked by his eccentric online presence, making several key decisions through the use of Twitter polls and often using rhetoric uncommon for a leader of a billion-dollar company.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Shannon Liss-Riordan, zeroed in on comments Musk has made in the past, connecting them to the disproportionate number of women fired by Twitter.

"Moreover, Elon Musk has made a number of publicly discriminatory remarks about women, further confirming that the mass termination's greater impact on female employees resulted from discrimination," the lawsuit said.

Liss-Riordan represents current and former Twitter employees in three other pending lawsuits filed in the same federal court since last month.

Musk and Twitter have denied wrongdoing in the previous suits, and have yet to comment on the allegations made by Strifling and Turkal.

Twitter Elon musk Lawsuit