Former Bloomberg Reporter Sues, Alleging Sex and Race Discrimination

Former Bloomberg reporter Nafeesa Syeed has sued the company for discrimination, claiming that she resigned from Bloomberg News in 2018 due to the organization's "top-down systemic sex and racially biased discriminatory practices for promotion and compensation against minority women," according to published reports.

In her lawsuit, Syeed alleges she first started working out of the company's Dubai bureau as a correspondent covering politics and the economy in the Persian Gulf. She eventually transferred to Washington, D.C., and later applied for foreign policy correspondent positions, but Bloomberg leadership passed over her in favor of male colleagues, some of whom were "far less qualified," according to the lawsuit. When she reported this to a male editor, she was told the "position was not designated a 'diversity slot' and, therefore, she would not be considered."

Bias remains a barrier to workplace equity. A McKinsey study on women in the workplace found that for every 100 men promoted into their first managerial positions, only 72 women get the same opportunity. In a study published last year by Deloitte, 64% of respondents reported they had experienced workplace bias and 34% of those said they didn't speak up about it. Issues of race and sex discrimination continue to plague many industries. Ms. Syeed's experiences as a South Asian-American woman bring into sharp focus the challenges that women — especially non-white women — can face in the workplace.