OSLO, April 12 (Reuters) – A court docket in Oslo on Wednesday started listening to a gender discrimination case introduced by an worker at Norway’s $1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund in opposition to her employer.
Elisabeth Bull Daae, head of buying and selling analytics at Norges Financial institution Funding Administration, is suing the unit of the central financial institution managing the fund for 16 million crowns ($1.54 million) in compensation and damages.
She says she was paid lower than her male colleagues doing equal jobs for a decade.
The central financial institution, which pushes the corporations it invests in to have extra girls on their boards and to fight all types of discrimination, denies the allegations.
Within the first case of its type for the fund, a number of the witnesses to be known as embrace central financial institution Governor Ida Wolden Bache, fund Chief Govt Nicolai Tangen and his deputy Trond Grande, and the fund’s chief funding officer, Geir Oeyvind Nygaard.
Bull Daae remains to be working for the fund, one of many world’s largest buyers.
She stated she was additionally requested by a few of her male colleagues to alter the cleaning soap within the males’s rest room and to examine whether or not there was contemporary milk within the fridge in a communal space.
“Are there such massive variations (in work duties) that may professional such giant pay variations? Or are we in entrance of a transparent, systematic case of pay discrimination primarily based on gender?” Bull Daae’s lawyer, Sigurd Knudtzon, advised the court docket.
The lawyer representing the fund stated the connection between worker and employer had damaged down regardless of its efforts to enhance it.
“The financial institution had revered her, valued her, favored her, given her thrilling opportunies and tried to assist her,” Jan Fougner advised the court docket.
“They’ve tried for over a 12 months to resolve this example however this was not achievable. This can be a unhappy case.”
($1 = 10.3987 Norwegian crowns)
Reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Modifying by Mike Harrison and Angus MacSwan
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