WeWork Pregnancy-Bias Case Ripples Over Into The Wing
The Wing Co-Founder Linked to WeWork Anti-Pregnancy Case
Jennifer Berrent, WeWork’s chief legal officer and a director of The Wing, is listed as a defendant in the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission case being brought by Medina Bardhi, a WeWork employee for more than five years who was ousted as Chief Executive Officer Adam Neumann’s chief of staff.
“As the founders of a company whose mission is to advance women and as mothers ourselves, we find these allegations appalling,” The Wing’s CEO Audrey Gelman and Chief Operating Officer Lauren Kassan said in an emailed statement.
Berrent called Bardhi’s pregnancy a “problem” that needed “a solution” and “to be fixed,” according to the complaint filed Oct. 31. Bardhi also claims Berrent and Neumann agreed to hire a man as WeWork chief of staff and pay him an annual salary of $400,000 and a $175,000 signing bonus. Bardhi was being paid $150,000 for the same job, according to the suit.
‘Zero Tolerance’
The complaint cites a separate lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court by another employee, Lisa Bridges, against WeWork and Berrent alleging gender discrimination, retaliation and gender-based pay disparities. Bridges alleged Berrent tried to justify the pay disparity by asserting that “men take risks and women don’t.”
WeWork reiterated its statement from last week. “WeWork intends to vigorously defend itself against this claim. We have zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind. We are committed to moving the company forward and building a company and culture that our employees can be proud of.”
Since its start in 2016, The Wing has sought to create a community for women to gain professional, social and economic advancement. The New York-based company has 10,000 members with eight locations in U.S. and recently opened its first international space, a five-story townhouse in London.
WeWork, which is a competitor to The Wing, is exploring a sale of its minority stake, Bloomberg reported last month.
Berrent hasn’t attended a board meeting of The Wing in more than a year and both she and WeWork have not been involved in the company during that time, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be named.
When WeWork sells its stake in The Wing, Berrent would lose her board seat, the person said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gillian Tan in New York at gtan129@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net, Josh Friedman, Alan Mirabella
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