DFEH lays out a handful of allegations regarding how women are treated in the workplace at Activision Blizzard, painting a painful picture of frustrated ambition and of overwork and underpay that they claim begins immediately at hire. In the lawsuit, DFEH claims that women hired are "offered lower compensation and less lucrative job assignments and opportunities than their male counterparts." The lawsuit alleges that women are offered lower salaries and less equity at every level. In one example of the difference in pay between men and women, DFEH shows a table of male and female executives and their salaries over a several-year period. The female executive is always making less by several hundred thousand dollars. The lawsuit claims that this pattern of discrimination is continuing to this day.
In addition to starting at a massive disadvantage, DFEH offers over half a dozen examples in which women are passed over for promotion despite being more qualified than their male peers. One example cited in the suit is a woman who has taken on the duties of a manager, "but when she asked her male supervisor about being fairly paid for the work she was actually doing and promoted into that position, the manager commented that they could not risk promoting her as she might get pregnant and like being a mom too much." It goes on to discuss women being reprimanded for picking up children even though their male peers were playing video games during the same period. Women of color, DFEH alleges, were "particularly vulnerable targets."