Nike's Women Are Running A Marathon, Not A Sprint

It’s facing lawsuits against pay and workplace policies that remain despite firing managers for sexual harassment

- Rebecca Greenfield and Eben Novy-Williams

Up until recently, sexual harassment claims at Nike Inc. followed a familiar trajectory in the #MeToo era. Women who worked at the company shared information about the abuse they faced at work. Shortly after, a group of executives left.

Now four former female Nike employees are suing the athletic apparel giant—not for sexual harassment, but for pay discrimination and limited opportunities for women to win promotions. The plaintiffs are seeking damages and an end to Nike’s alleged discriminatory policies. If the lawsuit clears the difficult hurdle of attaining class-action status, a lawyer for the plaintiffs says, she expects at least 500 more women to join.

“Just firing a few people is not going to change something that has been in the making for many years,” says Laura Salerno Owens, the plaintiffs’ attorney. “That’s not how this works.”

High-profile departures by men such as those at the NFL Network and CBS Corp. have been followed by those companies also being sued for sexual harassment. What makes the Nike suit different is that it aims to take down an alleged system of discrimination in which harassment is only one part of a larger problem. It also may mean that the ousting of bad actors may be just the beginning of a company’s legal trouble, rather than the end.

“If there is a culture of harassment within an organization, that probably suggests broader problems around gender equity,” says Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center. In the Nike case, those broader problems include accusations of depressed starting salaries and failure to promote women to the highest-paying jobs.