Six female employees of investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein have filed a $1.4bn (£800m) sex discrimination claim for unfair and abusive treatment.
The lawsuit alleges that the women were consistently passed over for senior-level jobs in the bank’s London and New York offices, were paid significantly less than their male colleagues and were made to work in a hostile environment.
The women claimed that their male colleagues would boast of visiting a strip club, bring prostitutes to the office during their lunch hour and would subject their female counterparts to sexist remarks.
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Women were hired as “eye candy” and one was referred to as the “Pamela Anderson of trading”, the women said.
US investment bank Morgan Stanley paid $54m (£30.7m) in July 2004 to settle claims that it discriminated against women through pay rises and promotions, had excluded them from company events, and subjected them to lewd behaviour.
