In the UK, Annette Plaut, a senior fellow at the University of Exeter, has been awarded £100,000 in compensation for being fired because of a “too loud voice”. The Guardian talks about it. According to Plaut, she worked for 29 years in the department of physics, and before she was fired, she was twice suspended from work and forbidden to communicate with colleagues – because of this, she began to have mental health problems.
“I have a naturally loud voice. In New York or Germany, where I lived and worked for years, no one complained about my voice. It was only in Exeter that pressure was put on me to change this inalienable characteristic of me. I believe that some senior university and human resources staff stubbornly condemn loud girls, because their existence contradicts stereotypical ideas about how a woman should behave,” Plaut said.
In turn, the university said that they fired Plaut because of the abusive manner of communication. One way or another, the court recommended that the victim not try to recover at the department in order to avoid possible conflicts.
