A former employee of Wikipedia’s parent company has filed a federal lawsuit alleging she was fired after reporting her direct supervisor for gender discrimination and harassment.
The woman, Kayla Mae, was hired by the Wikimedia Foundation in November 2022, where she worked as a software engineer for nearly two years.
Her role allowed her to work remotely from Texas, and she was assigned to work on a team managed by Dennis Mburugu, a Wikimedia employee based in Kenya.
Within the first few months of her employment, she encountered problems with Mburugu, according to her complaint. Among other things, Mburugu asked her inappropriate questions about her sexual identity — she is a transgender female — and inquired about her medical history, Mae wrote in the complaint.
Classic workplace transphobia and ableism. I hope she gets some sort of compensation and whatever form of justice she is looking for. Transphobes ask some of the most insanely invasive questions of trans people. I am regularly shocked by it.
That’s right. You’re almost certainly looking at the tip of the iceberg. Let’s hope that the discovery processes will be extensive.