In an essay published Tuesday morning, a former SpaceX engineer claims that “misogyny is rampant” at the Elon Musk-led company, where she claims she received little to no assistance when she reported sexism and sexual harassment to her supervisors and HR.
In the post, Ashley Kosak, the former mission integration engineer, now an Apple engineer, said that she had been harassed by her male employees on numerous occasions, including coworkers who touched her, came to her residence, and messaged her on her Instagram account to ask her out. Instead of having dialogues with the accused perpetrators, Kosak said she reported each occurrence to human resources and was promised that a company training would be held.
She began her career with SpaceX as an intern in 2017, then became a full-time build reliability engineer in 2019 before being promoted to mission integration engineer. She worked at Cape Canaveral, where she integrated the company’s flagship crewed mission and Demo-2, as well as evaluating technical risk for the vehicle. She adds that it is nearly impossible for a woman, particularly an Asian American woman, to reach this level in the space industry.
She terms her superiors very uncooperative and writes “few weeks after my start date, a fellow intern approached me in our intern housing and grabbed my butt while I was washing my dishes. I reported the incident to a superior and another colleague, but the matter was never brought to HR. I had to continue living in the residence with this man.”
She claimed that employees had messaged her on Instagram to invite her out and that she had received a call at 4 a.m. from one of them. A different coworker, she claimed, came over to her residence and “insisted on touching me even when I repeatedly requested we stay professional.”
Claiming Elon Musk a sadistic, Kosak wrote “Elon Musk’s behavior bears a remarkable similarity to the behavior of a sadistic and abusive man who had previously been part of my life,”.
The Verge reported on Tuesday that four more former SpaceX employees had experienced or seen sexual harassment while working there. Former employees in three of the alleged cases informed the publication that they did not think HR’s response was acceptable.
