A banker in England who had a witch’s hat left on her desk by drunken male colleagues has been awarded more than 2 million pounds for sexual discrimination.
Stacey Macken sued BNP Paribas, a French bank, for years of unequal pay and harassment by male colleagues.
Macken, 50, is a finance specialist at the bank. She claimed that over a four-year period she received hundreds of thousands of pounds less than her male colleagues in salary and bonuses. When she complained to her managers, Macken said she was treated unfairly.
According to The Guardian, Macken was belittled by her boss who kept telling her “not now, Stacey.” Soon, according to Macken, others in the firm would use the phrase.
Within months of joining the company, Macken claimed she was exposed to sexist behavior involving one of her bosses, The Guardian reported.
According to testimony in her case, “In October 2013, a large Halloween-style black witch’s hat was left on Stacey Macken’s desk after some of the prime brokerage team, including Matthew Pinnock (one of her managers), had gone drinking at the pub towards the end of the day.”
A co-worker of Macken’s testified that she saw Macken “visibly upset,” and that she said she “felt really uncomfortable working with those male colleagues, knowing that one of them had purposefully gone out of their way to leave a witch’s hat on her desk.”
Macken’s settlement was one of the largest in the country’s history.
©2022 Cox Media Group
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