@Lurker ...
I know many of those minions.
Oracle has many women in their sales force.
The key metric is the base salary of the woman and those of her underlings.
Assume that they are all on the same sales incentive plan.
Now you take a look at the cost per revenue generated by the sales rep.
If the woman had a base that was double that of her younger counter part and she didn't bring in twice the revenue, then she would cost more than the younger person. It would be simple math.
So you can take a look at the cost of revenue by sales rep to see who's more efficient. It could be that the younger worker, even though he brought in less revenue was still a cheaper option.
That's the straight bean counter argument.
That said... the allegations of harassment is another issue. Again it could be ageism or sexism, or neither.
Sales critters tend to be pack animals. That is... if you don't belong to their pack, they will cut you out. So it could be not so much a 'good ol boys network' but something close. (Women too can be part of the pack.)
I was once part of a team of top performers at Big Blue.
After I left, one of my friends was cut. Not because of his age... (they were all older seasoned vets.). But he happened to have two quarters where he was the low man in the group. Wrong place at the wrong time. I had left a couple years earlier because even though I was pulling out the best numbers in the territory, my quota exceeded what the region could produce. Its another way to force someone out. Unrealistic quotas for the territory forcing you to kill yourself for a target you could never hit.
I wish her luck, but its always going to be difficult to prove sexism or ageism because the deck is stacked against you. The best thing you can do is to be an independent consultant. You make more for taking on slightly more risk. But you get to call your own shots.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
