The 29-year-old blonde executive who was earning stg£600,000 a year at an investment firm in the City of London says she was "disgusted" when her boss, married father-of-two Mark Lowe, brought what she claims were high-class escorts to business meetings and allegedly portrayed women, particularly blonde women, as objects having no intelligence. Lowe, owner of Nomos Capital, has robustly denied Ms Wimmer's claims and refuted suggestions that she was hounded out of her job by his behaviour.

The Canadian-born City executive, who was treated for depression, is suing for £4m, claiming sex discrimination, unlawful deduction of wages, unfair constructive dismissal and disability discrimination, which Lowe contests. The case is being heard by an employment tribunal in London.

Despite the allegations made at the tribunal, Wimmer has failed to garner the support of the sisterhood. Rather, she has been met with a hostile barrage of criticism.

"Tribunals are not a get-rich-quick scheme for disgruntled female employees. It's these sorts of cases (along with demands for multi-year maternity leaves) that could soon make women unemployable," writes a female critic.

Never before has there been such resounding absence of support for a female victim of sexual discrimination and harassment. This is despite the fact that millionaire financier Mark Lowe has openly admitted that he did refer to Ms Wimmer as a "dumb blonde" and as "decorative" despite her generating £600m a year for the company and having a degree in political science and an MBA.

Now more than ever, women need one another as the workplace becomes a veritable minefield. One in three women is bullied or harassed at work according to a recent survey. The majority of these women reported suffering from "anger, mental stress, depression, lowered confidence and insomnia".

With redundancies rising, it has also been reported that women are suffering disproportionately. Recent research in the UK indicated the redundancy rate among women has risen by 2.3 per cent, almost double the rate for men, over the past year. The number of women holding senior positions in both private and public sectors has also fallen when compared with last year.

To say that women feel vulnerable in their jobs right now is an understatement. An estimated 30,000 women lose their jobs as a result of pregnancy every year without even factoring in the current economic crisis, according to the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Law firm Leigh Day & Co, which specialises in pregnancy discrimination, has received such a substantial increase in inquiries that it has had to set up a telephone helpline solely dedicated to supporting worried women. Citizens advice bureaus are also seeing an influx of women who believe they have been mistreated. Nothing underlines the reality of sexual discrimination more than recent news from Pact, an advice service funded by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, that couples are increasingly opting for abortions.

"We recently spoke with a woman very high up in the corporate world who was

afraid of what going on maternity leave in the current climate might mean. Women are wondering, 'Will I get back in, will the company think I am not doing my bit?'" says Berit Andersen, a counsellor with Pact, adding that she is "very surprised" that women still experience high levels of discrimination when it came to pregnancy in the workplace.

Faced with such grim reality, it seems that rather than uniting women, the crude and cut-throat world of business is driving them apart.

"She was earning £600,000, she started on £60,000, that's a 1,000 per cent increase. Mr Lowe, if you're looking for a replacement for the fragile Ms Wimmer, you know where to find me," writes a female critic.

Until now, women fighting sexual discrimination cases were held up as the bravest of warriors doing us all a service, highlighting that inappropriate behaviour, sexual or otherwise, could no longer be swept under the carpet. Now, a lack of empathy for Jordan Wimmer appears to be a giant step backward.

"Jesus, for that money he could call me a dumb blonde and more everyday," said one woman in her 20s.

Ms Wimmer said "alarm bells should have rung" when she was first hired by the investment company after Mr Lowe spoke of "the perils" of employing women and asked whether she wanted to have children. But she said, "Mark was one of the biggest players in the industry at the time and it is probably fair to say that I was in awe of him."

She claims that to hold on to her job, she put up with such inappropriate questioning and tolerated being part of a three-woman team which Mr Lowe reportedly called 'Mark's Angels'. She said he took his inspiration from the film Charlie's Angels -- she was blonde, while her colleagues were brunette and of Chinese origin.

In evidence at the tribunal, Ms Wimmer claimed that Lowe began sharing his sexual preferences with her and she said that that made her uncomfortable. She also claimed that he had a penchant for exotic Asian women and said he didn't like blondes because they were too "commercial looking". Lowe rejected these claims.

His emails, which were sent to the entire team, caused embarrassment. One entitled 'Who is your real friend?' advised readers to find out by locking their girlfriend and their dog in the boot of their car for an hour. It concluded: 'When you open the boot, who is really happy to see you?'

In another email entitled, 'Never hurt a fly', the punchline was, 'The moral of the story is, whenever a fly goes down, some pussy is in serious danger.'

In his defence, Mr Lowe said it was commonplace for bankers to send such emails. "We're all adults. I believe everyone's business associates do the same nowadays."

Ms Wimmer alleged that Mr Lowe also had her and another colleague accompany him to the Crazy Horse cabaret which was "full of suited men" and "women in nothing but G-strings". She added, "To say that Carol and I looked out of place would be an understatement."

According to Ms Wimmer, "Ms Wanju engaged Mark in a private lap dance. This involved straddling Mark, facing towards me and Carol. She began thrusting her hips in a fast motion." Mr Lowe then reportedly went on to have another lap dance with a waitress who rubbed her breasts in his face, it was claimed. "It was wrong on so many levels that I cannot even begin to articulate it. Mark knew Carol and I would hate it and that we were not in a position to say anything for fear of losing our jobs," Ms Wimmer said. Mr Lowe denied her account.

Whilst we may have come some way regarding legal protection for victims of sexual discrimination, only last year a Russian executive lost her sexual harassment case on the grounds that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff. The 22-year-old would have become the third woman in Russian history to bring a successful action against a male employer.

She alleged she was locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss. "He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word, I didn't realise that he wasn't speaking metaphorically," she said.

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally. "If we had no sexual harassment, we would have no children," the judge ruled.

Only last month, David Letterman announced he was being blackmailed over a sexual affair with an employee.

"I have had sex with women who work for me on this show, would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would, especially for the women."

The US National Organisation for Women accused Letterman of promoting a "toxic" environment in the workplace. Nell Scovell, who worked on the programme for five months, described in an article for Vanity Fair how senior male employees there frequently enjoyed adulterous affairs with their female subordinates. "I want to shine a light on gender inequality in that particular workplace," she said. "It pains me that almost 20 years later the situation for female writers in late-night television hasn't improved."

Ms Wimmer's case is continuing. In the meantime, Mr Lowe, who has a 40-room castle in France and homes in London and Thailand, freely admits he is "not monogamous". He accepts he has three lovers around the world as well as an estranged wife in London. But, as "a wealthy and powerful" man, he claims the women are attracted to him because "it's the way of the world". It was once before and apparently is now.