CIGNA Lawsuit Claims Gender Bias

Workforce Management
March 3, 2011

The lawsuit seeks class-action status, alleging that there is a pattern of gender discrimination at CIGNA Healthcare. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensation and punitive damages and a restructuring of CIGNA Healthcare’s workforce “so that females are promoted into higher and better-paying classifications."

A CIGNA Healthcare Inc. manager filed a gender bias lawsuit March 3 that seeks class-action status against the health care provider, alleging the CIGNA Corp. unit gives preferential treatment to men and discriminates against its female employees.

According to Bretta Karp v. CIGNA Healthcare Inc., which was filed in federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts, the Boston-based provider contracting manager, who has worked at the unit since 1997, said she was told she was denied a promotion last year because she “came across as too aggressive” in interviews.
Instead, the job was given to a less-experienced male employee, Bill O’Donnell, who subsequently informed Karp that her largest market, Vermont, was being given to a younger, less-qualified male employee.

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