Press Release: Allison Schieffelin

Morgan Stanley > Gender Discrimination > Press Release > Ms. Allison Schieffelin

STATEMENT OF ALLISON SCHIEFFELIN

EEOC v. MORGAN STANLEY and SCHIEFFELIN

MORGAN STANLEY

September 10, 2001

Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for being here.

I am here today because, sadly, there is still gender discrimination at Morgan Stanley.

I am here today because women are still almost entirely excluded from the most important and the most powerful jobs at Morgan Stanley. I am here to represent the dozens of women of my generation who have suffered the emotional loss and the material loss caused by Morgan Stanley's discrimination. I am here for all of the women who have just begun their careers at Morgan Stanley, who want to believe, as I believed with my whole heart, that discrimination is a thing of the past and that their careers and their generation won't be affected by sex discrimination. And I am here on behalf of all of the women who will follow us, who deserve the equal opportunity we were denied.

I know that I had all the right stuff to reach the highest ranks of Morgan Stanley. It is not disputed that I was a top performer. And everyone who worked with me knows that I volunteered for every possible assignment, not only because I wanted to get ahead, but also because I loved the business. I loved the firm. Morgan Stanley had no more loyal employee than me. I promoted Morgan Stanley in every possible way. I had the respect of my peers in the industry and the respect of my colleagues at Morgan Stanley. And I respected them. I was and I remain intensely dedicated to my clients.

I know that I was discriminated against when I was passed over for promotion, and I also know that the same thing happened to a lot of other women. The EEOC conducted its own detailed investigation and agreed with me.

Many, many women were denied pay and promotion commensurate with their male counterparts. This is not to imply that there weren't many men at Morgan Stanley who achieved prominence because of their hard work and exceptional performance. I had the pleasure of working with many of them. But, in too many instances, women who where better educated, had better performance, women who were more dedicated to their work and more loyal to Morgan Stanley than their male counterparts lost out in pay and promotion.

Many women have, understandably, given up and left Morgan Stanley in frustration over unequal pay and promotion. Some of these women have moved to other firms hoping to find a place that plays by the rules. Some have left the industry.

Many women stay and tolerate discrimination. Some of these women hope that if they keep quiet about the problem that Morgan Stanley will reward them. Some women simply fear that if they complain it will tear apart their careers and their personal lives. I now know that those fears are justified.

The campaign of retaliation that Morgan Stanley launched against me was designed not only to punish me but also to scare other women who might dare to complain of discrimination. From the time that I filed my charge with the EEOC, senior managers at the firm sought to denigrate my work, ostracize me and humiliate me. They took away projects that I had worked on for years. They diminished my daily responsibilities. I believe that they thought that if they made my day-to-day life miserable enough that I would just pack up and leave. But I couldn't just walk away. And so when that day-to-day mistreatment didn't force me to quit, Morgan Stanley fired me. They actually fired me without warning last October, after almost 15 years of service. They used as an excuse the type of incident that happens on Wall Street trading floors every single day, the type of thing that no one else at Morgan Stanley would ever be fired for. They didn't have a legitimate reason for firing me; they just wanted me gone.

Morgan Stanley destroyed my career. They destroyed everything that I had put my heart and soul into for fifteen years. And the retaliation that I endured has had the effect, and I believe the intent, of sending a loud message to women that if they complain, they too will be diminished from a somebody to a nobody in the Morgan Stanley community.

I was born and raised at Morgan Stanley. I was born professionally out of business school into the MBA Associate program in 1986 and I was raised professionally at Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley's corporate color is blue, and it was often joked that I was so loyal to the firm that I bled Morgan Stanley blue. I had deep friendships at Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley was my firm, my home for almost fifteen years. So as a professional I was shocked that my firm refused to play by the rules, but as a human being I was heartbroken that Morgan Stanley management had no interest in fixing the problem of gender discrimination.

I kept trying, in every way possible way, through women's meetings, through direct conversations with management, and through the formal review process, as a loyal employee, to help the firm address the problem of gender discrimination. But it didn't help. Things stayed the same.

But I wasn't willing to leave behind all of the achievements I had worked so hard for, and I wasn't willing to suffer silently the unfair treatment of discrimination.

So I filed the charge of discrimination with the EEOC in 1998. I did it only with genuine sadness and great reluctance. I filed the charge only when it became devastatingly clear that there was no interest at Morgan Stanley in addressing women's complaints. I felt strongly that it was not only my legal right, but also my moral obligation to see that women are treated fairly.

The fact that the EEOC has filed this case on all of our behalf today sends the definitive message that discrimination is illegal and that our rights, and the rights of our daughters, will be protected.

I want to thank the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Ms. Cari Dominguez, and the other Commissioners. I want to thank Spencer Lewis, the District Director. And I want to thank Elizabeth Grossman and the other attorneys at the EEOC, the investigators and the staff. Thank you for your tireless efforts to bring this important matter to light.