Yahoo! culture favors women, lawsuit citing gender bias claims

Marissa Mayer, President and CEO of Yahoo, in 2013 in San Francisco (Reuters)

A former editorial member at Yahoo who was terminated in 2014 filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the Internet company claiming it manipulated an employee-rating system and had a gender bias against men.

UPI.com reported that Gregory Anderson said he was praised and promoted for his work at the company over a four-year period, but soon after Marissa Mayer became the company’s CEO in 2012, she began to implement quarterly reviews. Anderson alleges that management manipulated the reviews to meet financial goals, including justifying mass firings.

BizJournals.com reported that female managers allegedly showed gender bias by unfairly hiring women even when men were more qualified for the position.

Yahoo, for its part, issued a statement to the website: "As noted in our Diversity Report, fairness is a guiding principle of our annual review and reward process. Our performance-review process was developed to allow employees at all levels of the company to receive meaningful, regular and actionable feedback from others. We believe this process allows our team to develop and do their best work. Our performance-review process also allows for high performers to engage in increasingly larger opportunities at our company, as well as for low performers to be transitioned out.”

Anderson goes on to claim that the company did not provide copies of these poor reviews that his termination was based on.