A former SAP head of office in Southeast Asia has accused the German software company of violating local laws by treating it differently from fellow men during a corporate restructuring and leaving it jobless.
According to BJ Burlingame, former head of SAP’s Asia-Pacific and Japan Business Transformation Unit, the move, which won her unfair treatment, raised concerns about the company’s lack of gender diversity.
She did so first at the all-in-one meeting, and later followed by email in June 2020. Two weeks after the email, she said she found herself in conservation, although there were no hints that her work was in danger, decent performance reviews and a succession plan that she will take the position of her former manager at some point.
And although Burlingame was not the only party affected by the corporate restructuring, she claims the affected men’s parties have found other roles.
SAP according to reports replied in its own statement that other contractors had also left in the reorganization and that Burlingame was not “suitable for [other] roles for which she is applying. “He denied gender as a factor.
Francis Go, a partner at Singapore-based law firm Harry Elias, told The register in the case of Burlingame:
Goch said the case is now before courts in Singapore and that trial dates have not yet been set.
The documents were first submitted to the Supreme Court of Singapore in December and various hearings took place between February 2021 and September 2021.
This was stated by a spokesman for SAP The register.
“SAP is committed to being a diverse and inclusive company. We embrace and proactively promote cultural, gender and generational diversity in all the regions in which we have employees, ”before shaking up the statistics on the percentage of women in the company’s workforce.
These statistics include women, who make up 34.7% of the SAP workforce in the Asia-Pacific region (APJ), 34% of the region’s senior management team and three of the four key regional senior executives – Chief Operating Officer, Chief HR Officer and Chief Financial Officer.
“In Singapore, SAP Asia recently won the Tripartite Alliance Award, which recognizes fair and progressive employment practices,” the spokesman added.
The company was unable to comment further due to ongoing litigation.
According to public profiles on LinkedIn, SAP’s CFO for Southeast Asia appears to have started his role in July 2021 – more than a year after Burlingame’s termination. The female CFO for Australia and New Zealand seems to have started at some point in the last two weeks. According to her LinkedIn profile, the current female chief operating officer of APJ has been in the role since April 2021.
Requests to SAP to better understand the gender composition of its APJ C-suites during Burlingame’s term were not answered.
By comparison, the Google APAC 2021 workforce was reported [PDF] in 36.4% of women, and worldwide women make up a miserable 27% of Cisco Workforce in 2020.
Dell reported [PDF] 31.8% of its global workforce in 2021 is women, but has introduced a mandate that defines half of its total workforce and 40% of its leaders as women by 2030.
According to the World Bank, women wear make-up almost half (49.5%) of the world population in 2020 ®