Apple’s senior manager placed on indefinite paid leave after raising sexism concerns

Apple’s senior engineering program manager, Ashley Gjøvik shared that she has been placed on an indefinite paid leave by the employee relations team while the company investigates her alleged sexism at the company.

Earlier, Anita Nariani Schulze, a female engineer from India, filed a lawsuit against Apple for alleged racist treatment by her managers. Schulze claimed that the mistreatment forced her to resign in 2019 because her senior and direct managers excluded her from meetings while preferring her male counterparts, they micromanaged her, denied her bonuses, and unnecessarily scrutinized her.

In addition, the company fired digital ads expert Antonio Garcia after 2000 employees objected to his misogynistic comments in his book “Choas Monkeys.”

Instead of setting boundaries, Apple’s puts senior manager on leave for taking a stand against sexism at work

In an interview with The Verge, Gjøvik said that when she had been raising concerns about sexism at work, the company offered her free Employee Assistance Program (EAP) therapy and medical leave. However, the situation changed when she used Twitter to share her work experience at Apple and she was put on administrative leave.

“For months, I have been raising concerns with Apple employee relations about years of experiences with sexism, a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, and retaliation,” Gjøvik says in an interview with The Verge.

“I asked them to mitigate the hostile work environment while they investigate, and they initially offered me EAP therapy and medical leave. I told them that made no sense, and said they should talk to my leadership and set up oversight and boundaries. I added that if there was no other option they could give me paid administrative leave.

They apparently made no effort to set boundaries and instead said they were placing me on administrative leave and implied they did not want me on Slack where I had been vocal about my concerns with certain policies at the company. They also implied they didn’t want me to meet one-on-one with other women at the company about their concerns with Apple policies, which I had been doing.”

So, following raising concerns to #Apple about #sexism, #hostileworkenvironment, & #unsafeworkconditions, I'm now on indefinite paid administrative leave per #Apple employee relations, while they investigate my concerns. This seems to include me not using Apple's internal Slack.

— Ashley M. Gjøvik (@ashleygjovik) August 4, 2021

Apple’s 2020 inclusivity report showed that the company was a more inclusive and diverse workforce with 34% female and 66% male employees, worldwide from Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Indigenous, Multiracial, and White communities in the United States. And the company’s Senior VP Retail and People Deirdre O’Brien and Senior VP and General Counsel Kate Adams are amongst the highest-paid executives in the country. With those figures, Apple must also provide women a safe working environment where they can not only work but also raise their voices against mistreatment like Ashley Gjøvik.