Women’s club in sex discrimination row

By Harriet Alexander in New York

and Mark Molloy THE New York human rights commission is investigating whether a womenonly work space and networking club is breaking anti-discrimination laws.

The Wing was founded in 2016 and has more than 1,500 members working from three offices in New York, and one in Washington.

The high-profile club – with its Instagram-friendly millennial-pink walls, bookshelves, beauty rooms and communal spaces and an annual fee of $2,300 (£1,600) – offers female freelancers and remote workers an alternative to working in coffee shops.

Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, the club’s founders, both aged 30, have cultivated a circle of social media celebrities.

“We have a diverse, culturally rich, positive environment,” Ms Gelman told The Daily Telegraph. But the club, which has drawn more than $40million in venture capital, has fallen victim to its own media success, with the commission launching what they term a “commission-initiated investigation”.

Ilann Margalit Maazel, a prominent civil rights litigator, told Jezebel, a website geared towards women: “I think I’m comfortable in saying that it’s likely illegal. And it would certainly make for an interesting lawsuit.”