Japanese bank accused of sexism and racism
November 4, 2009
Two women who moved to Japanese bank Nomura are suing the firm for unfair dismissal and sexual and racial discrimination. When Lehman Brothers collapsed last September the two women who were part of Asian equities sales moved to Nomura as part of a buyout deal. Both expected their roles to be similar to the ones they had at Lehman Brothers.
However 30-year-old Maureen Murphy alleges that in one meeting she was witness to a colleague being told that her breasts were like ‘honkers’. Murphy also claims that a male colleague said that in his opinion women had no place in the work place and should spend their time at home doing the cleaning. 37-year-old Anna Francis says that she and her team were treated with hostility when they moved to Nomura.
Both women are asking the bank to pay 1.5 million for loss of earnings and emotional stress. Both have been dismissed by Nomura who claims it did everything correctly and that the women’s redundancies were part of a reorganization strategy implemented after the company acquired part of Lehman Brothers.
Murphy who is of German and American descent also claims that colleagues at Nomura were unkind to her because of her accent. Both women claim that their eventual dismissal was down to the fact that their Japanese superiors did not like the fact that they were foreign and that they were female.
Barrister Michael Duggan told the Central London Employment Tribunal that he considered Nomura to be both institutionally sexist and racist. Nomura says that these claims are wholly unfounded and the case continues.
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