Norway wealth fund employee sues for workplace gender discrimination

"Neither have proven possible to do," Jan Fougner, the lawyer representing the bank, said in documents submitted to the court. "This is a sad personnel matter that has gone on for several years," said a fund spokesperson.

A gender discrimination hearing is due to open at a court in Oslo on Wednesday in a case brought by an employee at Norway's $1.4 trillion sovereign wealth fund, one of the world's largest investors, against her employer. Elisabeth Bull Daae, head of trading analytics at Norges Bank Investment Management, is sueing the unit of the central bank managing the fund for 16 million crowns ($1.54 million) in compensation and damages, court documents show.

The central bank, which pushes the firms it invests in to have more women on their boards and to combat all forms of discrimination, denies the allegations. In the first case of its kind for the fund, some of the witnesses to be called include central bank Governor Ida Wolden Bache, fund Chief Executive Nicolai Tangen and his deputy Trond Grande, and the fund's chief investment officer, Geir Oeyvind Nygaard.

Bull Daae says she was paid less than her male colleagues doing equivalent jobs for a decade. She said she was also asked by some of her male colleagues to change the soap in the men's bathroom and to check whether there was fresh milk in the fridge in a communal area.

"Bull Daae has been discriminated against in pay compared to male colleagues who have had, and still have, the same work or work of equal value," said Bull Daae's lawyer, Sigurd Knudtzon, in documents submitted to the court ahead of the trial's start. The fund said the relationship between employee and employer had "broken down" despite its efforts to improve it.

It said it had tried for "many years" to help Bull Daae and then resolve the conflict. "Neither have proven possible to do," Jan Fougner, the lawyer representing the bank, said in documents submitted to the court.

"This is a sad personnel matter that has gone on for several years," said a fund spokesperson. ($1 = 10.3987 Norwegian crowns)

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