London, Feb 8 (PTI) An employment tribunal judge in the UK has dismissed a discrimination case brought by an Indian management consultant who felt a colleague’s comparison of her to “Disneyfied” character Pocahontas made her “uncomfortable”.
Shivali Patel told the tribunal that her male colleague made the remark while talking about his wife during a Deloitte work drinks event.
According to a report in the ‘The Daily Telegraph’, Patel said she felt that there was a “sexual tone” to his comment which insinuated that her “similarities to his wife” and the cinematic character meant he found her attractive.
“I am an Indian female, the insinuation was that his wife looked similar to Pocahontas, the insinuation was that I had similarities to his wife and that he was in some way interested in me,” Patel is said to have told the tribunal.
“If his wife is a Caucasian female and Pocahontas in the Disneyfied version is tanned and somewhat looks like me, the insinuation is that I look like his wife who is tanned. It felt like he was implying he found me attractive; it had a sexual tone to it I felt uncomfortable about,” she said.
Her male colleague denied the allegations and told the panel that he was not insinuating any connection between his wife and Patel, and that he did not comment on her appearance.
“Our conclusions were that the conversation about Pocahontas related to genealogy and that [Ms Patel] had misremembered, misheard and/or unconsciously embroidered the discussion,” concluded Employment Judge Natasha Joffe recently.
The hearing in London was told Patel was employed as a GBP 63,000-a-year senior consultant in Deloitte’s digital division in March 2019. In September 2021, a “team drinks” event attended by the said colleague, a company director, and Patel was held at a local pub.
A conversation between the two employees arose in which Patel alleged the director made a remark about his wife in which he said she looked like Pocahontas.
The newspaper reports that the senior consultant sued her employees over several incidents which she perceived amounted to sex discrimination, race discrimination, harassment and constructive unfair dismissal. All the claims were reportedly dismissed by the panel. PTI AK AMS
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