Former Exec Sues Spotify For Gender Discrimination

A former female executive at Spotify (SPOT) is suing the music streaming service for alleged workplace sexism. Hong Perez, who served as a sales executive, accused the Swedish company of widespread gender discrimination, Variety reported.

The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, alleges everything from debaucherous, men-only company trips to unequal wealth distribution within the company.

Perez accused the company of promoting one unnamed male executive despite multiple sexual harassment accusations. She also accused another male executive of using a sexist swear word and waving off concerns about workplace diversity at a town hall meeting.

Head of U.S. sales Brian Berner was specifically named as a perpetrator of workplace discrimination. According to Perez, Berner took all-male employee groups to the Sundance Film Festival in recent years, which included drug use and even a physical altercation.

When Berner got in trouble with the company for other reasons, he laid the blame on Perez and had her fired earlier this year, according to the suit.

The suit also alleged that Spotify paid women less and offered them less in stock options — a common complaint in the tech world. A recent study found women in tech receive roughly half as much as their male counterparts in equity. In addition, other data suggests women in tech still get paid less than men on average.

“At Spotify, we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind at any level,” a Spotify representative told Variety. “While we cannot comment on the specific details of a pending litigation, these claims are without merit.”

Accusations of sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination at tech startups are not new. A 2017 study found that tech companies had a hard time retaining employees who are not white or male. According to the study, 37 percent of respondents who had left tech jobs said they did so because of discrimination.

Diversity numbers released earlier this year indicated 38.7 percent of Spotify employees identified as women, which is a slightly higher percentage than Facebook and Google.

Spotify, which is headquartered in Stockholm, reported revenue of $4.6 billion in 2017. The company began trading on April 3. Shares of Spotify were down 3.45 percent in late-day trading Wednesday.