A female newspaper reporter for the Houston Chronicle was terminated from her job because she failed to report moonlighting activity on her application. Ironically, the reporter, who had covered fashion for the Chronicle, was working a second job as a stripper.

The stripper story was broken by another Texas paper. From media reports, the reporter had also failed to tell the paper—or her colleagues—that she was currently writing a blog (with photos) on Facebook called “Diary of an Angry Stripper,” as well as a manuscript for a book, something that reporters usually disclose to their publishers.

The reporter, Sarah Tressler, indicated she was stunned at the firing, because she was told by management that she was doing a good job covering society events, style trends, and other assignments, and because she has a master’s degree from the prestigious New York University School of Journalism. She had worked for the paper for only 2 months.

The reporter explained that she did not list the stripper job on her Chronicle job application because it was only sporadic. She indicated that she had started exotic dancing to finance her education and continued to dance because it kept her in great shape.

If Tressler was trying to hide the second job before, she certainly wasn’t lately. She filed a gender discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission through her media-friendly attorney, Gloria Allred, a frequent guest on television with her clients in sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits. According to Allred, stripping is a “female-dominated profession,” so to single it out would be discriminatory. Allred also emphasized that exotic dancing is not against the law. “Men who are independent contractors are not fired for work done legally,” Allred tolda press conference.

At press time, the Chronicle had not commented on the complaint.

Sources: CNN, NY Daily News, Houston Chronicle

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A gay man has filed a complaint accusing his former boss of discrimination based on sexual orientation, but not against gay people, straight people.

The man has filed a complaint of discrimination based on sexual orientation, hostile work environment, and retaliation under the New York City Human Rights Law. The man, who was an HR director in the company, claims he fired in retaliation for objecting to his boss's bias against hiring straight people, among other issues.

In an interview with ABC News, the former HR director claims, “I witnessed it in meetings with the executive management team, where he'd blatantly state the fact that he only likes to hire gay men and beautiful women.”

According to the complaint, the boss said he preferred gay men as employees because they “were productive and he trusted them.”

“I was highly concerned for the organization and uncomfortable myself working there," the plaintiff says.

The plaintiff expressed concern about several incidents of discrimination based on sexual orientation and hostile working conditions, which are detailed in the complaint. In one incident, a member of senior management reportedly replied, “Well, he’s the owner of the company.”

According to the complaint, the boss allegedly began to retaliate against him, including making inaccurate statements about the employee’s work performance. Eventually, the HR director was fired.

The employer’s lawyer gave a statement to ABC, saying, “The company has reviewed the allegations and denies any wrongdoing. It denies there was discrimination or retaliation.” According to the lawyer, the HR director was fired for “a performance-related issue.”

The plainitff is seeking trial by jury.

Source: ABC News

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Nearly 70 percent of technology leaders believe they are missing vital skills as a result of low representation of women in their teams, according to the latest Harvey Nash Technology CIO survey.

Here are a few highlights of the survey:

Untapped potential: Sixty-eight percent of respondents identified at least one major positive impact they are missing from not having enough female representation on their teams. The skills/attributes most missed were relationships with internal customers (51 percent), team cohesion and morale (48 percent), and creativity and innovation (46 percent).

Gender imbalance in top positions: The proportion of CIOs and technology leaders that are female has remained virtually unchanged for the past 7 years at just 7 percent. (In 2005, it was 8 percent.)

Lack of female role models in middle management: Over one-third of those surveyed confirmed they have no female technology managers at all in their organization, and 81 percent have less than one-quarter of management roles populated by women.

Technology not seen as attractive to female graduates: Almost one-quarter of CIOs (24 percent) have no women at all on their technical and development teams. CIOs of both genders believe the main cause of gender imbalance is the supply of talent: 75 percent of women CIOs believe there is a lack of qualified women candidates available for technology roles and 88 percent of men share this view.

Overall, a major concern voiced in the survey is that there is a lack of female leaders in technology to inspire the next generation of female graduates.

Source: Harvey Nash

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