Houston is headquarters for Women Whistleblowers, a new online resource and community aimed at “bringing whistleblowers out of the shadows,” educating people about the contributions of women whistleblowers, and connecting potential whistleblowers with lawyers.

Tasha Mudd, a writer who helped launch Women Whistleblowers in October, said the idea for the website and community arose last year when she and some friends were talking over lunch about the “absurdity” of for-profit prisons.

“While looking into whistleblowing we simply noticed how many great whistleblowers were women. It just seemed like a really strong and simple concept for a website and to build a supportive community via Facebook,” Mudd, who recently moved to Zurich, Switzerland, from Houston, wrote in response to questions.

The community is for women who seek to expose corporate and government fraud.

Mudd said she organized the website and networking group with friends who are writers, bloggers, graphic designers and activists. The group includes a web designer in Shanghai, a creative director who works in Houston and the United Kingdom, and writers in New York and Seattle. They are looking for more writers, and Women Whistleblowers is talking to law firms in New York, Washington, D.C., Florida and Ohio about a partnership, Mudd said. She said lawyers would write articles for the website, offer legal advice and handle whistleblower litigation for women.

Since the website was launched in late October, Mudd said the organization has received more than 20 calls from women with questions about whistleblowing.

The website features a Top 10 list of women whistleblowers, which includes Houstonian Sherron Watkins, who worked at Houston's Enron Corp. and reported possible accounting irregularities to then-chairman Ken Lay in 2001. Enron collapsed, and Watkins was a prosecution witness during the 2006 criminal trial of Lay and former chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling.

On the website, Women Whistleblowers suggests women make great whistleblowers because they are less tolerant of business risk, are typically not part of the good-old-boy network at work, and also are more likely to protect people in weaker positions.

So what do Texas lawyers think about the assertion that women make great whistleblowers? Three employment law veterans said they don't consider whistleblower litigation to be disproportionately associated with women.

Michael Clark, special counsel at Duane Morris in Houston who does litigation including False Claims Act work, said he is not entirely convinced women are necessarily in position to be better whistleblowers. “I can see in this day and age, a woman might be more empowered, but I'm not sure,” he said.

Clark said a great whistleblower is simply someone who is in a position to have knowledge to blow the whistle. “I really try to resist stereotyping,” he said.

Kim Moore, an employment law partner in Strasburger & Price in Frisco, said whistleblowing is very case-specific and not necessarily linked to women or men, although she notes that women working in the health care industry are often in a position to bring whistleblower claims. “But, I've certainly had cases in the financial sector where it's a lot of men being in situations where they are more likely to be in position to be a whistleblower,” Moore said.

Mark Siurek, an employment lawyer who is managing partner of Warren & Siurek of Houston, said he sees a 50/50 split in gender when it comes to whistleblowers. “I don't see it gender-specific,” he said, noting like Clark that a whistleblower is someone in position to know things.

But Siurek said a website such as Women Whistleblowers can be very useful. “It's kind of a resource or safe harbor for women to go to. It's a great idea. Trust me, I love that,” he said.

Sexual harassment and assault claims and the “#MeToo” movement have been front and center in recent months, but Siurek said those claims are different from reporting corporate or government wrongdoing. “Women who are reporting sexual misconduct or some sort of workplace discrimination in the form of harassment, they aren't whistleblowers,” he said.

Robert Patten, president and chief executive officer of the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit “dedicated to combating fraud against the government,” said his organization does not keep statistics on the gender of whistleblowers, although he said he can think of several major False Claims Act cases in recent years in which the whistleblower was a woman.

“It's common for women to be whistleblowers in these cases,” he said.

Patten said, meanwhile, that he is seeing more and more women practitioners in the employment area, although has no more than anecdotal support that women are more likely to be whistleblowers.