In Civil Complaint 10 CIV 6950 - filed 9/15 - plaintiffs H. Cristina Chen-Oster, Lisa Parisi, and Shanna Orlich alleged that Goldman Sachs, their former employer, committed the below-listed violations.  They also provided this assessment of the firm:

Goldman Sachs is a global investment banking, securities and investment management firm.  The firm ifs famously secretive.  Until its IPO and conversion to a corporation in 1999, the firm operated as a partnership with relatively little public oversight and regulation.  Its culture has been described as insular, and its employees intensely loyal.  The firm is also famously profitable.

Accusation:  Goldman has distributed the benefits of its enormous success unequally - systematically favoring male professionals at the expense of their female counterparts. 

Accusation:  Goldman maintains pols and procedures for promoting its employees that result in a disproportionate promotion of men over equally or more qualified women.  As a result, female professionals have been systematically circumvented and excluded from promotion opportunities that are routinely afforded to their male counterparts.

Accusation:  The resulting underrepresentation of women in Goldman's management ranks is stark.  The number of women in management positions at Goldman dwindles as the level of management rises - from Associates, to VP's , to MD's, to Partners, and finally to the firm's management committee and executive officers.

Accusation:  Women at Goldman have received less compensation and have been promoted less frequently than their male counterparts as a result of the firm's discriminatory policies, patterns, and/or practices.  The violations of its female employees' rights are systemic, are based upon company-wide pols and practices, and are the result of unchecked gender bias that pervades Goldman's corporate culture.  They have not been isolated or exceptional incidents, but rather the regular and predictable result of Goldman's company-wide pols and practices.

Accusation:  Goldman gives its managers, the overwhelming majority of whom are men, unchecked discretion to assign responsibilities, accounts, and projects to their subordinates.  The end result is that managers, whether based on conscious or unexamined bias, most often assign the most lucrative and promising opportunities, assignments, and "seats" to men.

Accusation:  Goldman also grants its managers unbridled discretion to allocate resources among its employees, including but not limited to admin. support, training opportunities, and informal mentoring.  Goldman managers exercise this discretion in an ad hoc and/or subjective manner, without any formal oversight or procedure.  In practice, Goldman managers exercise this discretion in a way that provides disproportionately greater resources to their male subordinates than their female subordinates.

Accusation:  Goldman also has constructed and maintained a system for evaluating employees' performance that systematically discriminates against female professionals. 

Accusation:  Furthermore, these pols, patterns, and/or practices are no accident.  Rather, they are part and parcel of an outdated corporate culture.

Accusation:  These company-wide pols and practices, while facially neutral, have had an averse impact on the compensation, promotion, and perform evaluations of female employees as compared to their male counterparts.

   Accordingly, in addition to bringing this action on their own behalf, Plaintiffs also bring this action on behalf of a class of similarly situated current and former female Associates, VP's and MD's employed by Goldman, in order to end Goldman's discriminatory pols and/or practices and to make the Class whole.