A San Francisco court, a jury of 6 men and 6 women, ruled against Ellen Pao in her gender-discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most prominent venture-capital firms in the tech industry.
Pao, now the interim CEO of Reddit, was suing the firm, where she was a junior partner, for discriminating against her in the course of her employment and eventual dismissal. Pap claimed that the firm failed to promote her based on her gender and then fired her in retaliation when she sent a letter stating her concerns. She filed the suit in 2012 and it went to trail in February of this year. The case was highly publicized and one of the highest-profile lawsuits of the moment in Silicon Valley.
After the verdict, Pao posted a series of optimistic tweets.
The verdict wasn't a total
loss for women.
The case succeeded in
prompting discussion about women
in technology and bringing
certain inequalities and diversity issues to light.
With women representing less than
10 percent of venture capitalists, and leaving the industry at twice the rate
of men, (according to the Kauffman Foundation), there is obviously a lot of gender
discrimination in the tech and venture-capital industries. The
verdict wasn't a total loss for women. Fortune.com reached out to 15 young women
at venture capital and tech firms to find out what emotions and
conversations were being stirred by Pao's case. Most didn’t respond but 4 did.
I found their answers to be really interesting. Here’s what these four
women said was being discussed in their offices.
1. Most men
and women support Pao, but are afraid to publicly say so.
One woman said "A lot of them don’t
want to say anything negative about Kleiner Perkins in case they might want to
take money from them in the future, but their personal opinion that they hold
tends to go toward Ellen Pao,”
2. People
were curious as to how the witnesses’ testimonies would impact their careers.
They were wondering who would testify and if it would ruin their careers.
3. There
was a discussion about whether Pao’s case would result in fewer venture-capital
firms hiring or promoting women. A woman named Erika Brown
Ekiel, a former director of marketing at Greylock Partners, claimed to
have been told by a VC that he would be less likely to hire a female
partner if Kleiner loses the case.
4. The
case would encourage more women to speak up. Pao’s case seems to
have empowered other women in tech to speak out against gender bias. Just weeks
after Pao’s trial started, former employees of Facebook and Twitter filed
their own suits alleging gender discrimination.
5. Some
men are more sensitive to gender issues as a result of the case. One
of the women said that one of her former bosses – a white male — invited her to
lunch to seek her advice.
Labels:
Women
