Pao ’91 loses discrimination lawsuit

Ellen Pao ’91 lost her three-year discrimination lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers on Friday.

A jury found that Kleiner Perkins did not discriminate against Pao on the basis of gender and did not retaliate against her for reports of gender discrimination that she had filed with senior staff at the firm. Attorneys for Kleiner Perkins had argued that Pao, now the interim CEO of Reddit, was fired for poor performance and being difficult to work with.

Neither Pao nor Kleiner Perkins responded to requests for comment.

In 2005, Pao joined Kleiner Perkins as the chief of staff to a general partner at the firm andtook on the role of a junior investing partner in 2010. Pao was fired on Oct. 1, 2012.

Throughout the trial, Pao’s attorneys portrayed Kleiner Perkins as a boys’ club that promoted all-male outings and routine harassment. Her attorneys alleged the prestigious firm was a business in which associates talked of things like pornography and Playboy bunnies on business trips. Kleiner Perkins said the testimony was hearsay.

Another former female partner of Kleiner Perkins testified that a male colleague touched her with his leg under a table and also appeared at her hotel room one night in nothing but a bathrobe. Kleiner Perkins said that relationship was started mutually.

This past Friday, the 12-member jury consisting of six men and six women, found that Kleiner Perkins did not discriminate against Pao on any of her claims.

The verdict in the case, which some media outlets treated as a referendum on how welcome women are in Silicon Valley, was not surprising, Tracy Thomas, a law professor at the University of Akron and a co-editor of a blog about gender and the law, said.

“Gender discrimination cases are very difficult to win,” Thomas said. “Discrimination is often subtle and indirect — a compilation of comments and circumstances rather than an overt statement or hateful misogyny that our legal standards of evidence prefer.”

Fran Maier, the founder of TRUSTe, an online privacy management services provider, and a co-founder of Match.com, has experience working in the male-dominated technology industry.Women make up only 23 percent of the technology workforce in San Jose, Calif., and 21 percent in San Francisco, Calif., the two largest cities in the Silicon Valley region.

Maier said the loss was a big disappointment, because a win for Pao would have sent an important message about the importance of women in technology. She added thatthere is reason for optimism, though.

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“The train has left the station,” Maier said. “These firms have been given a wake-up call, and there will be more lawsuits.”

There is no question that women have too small of a presence in venture capital and in the larger technology sector, saidJohn Kang, a professor at the St. Thomas University School of Law who has written about masculinity and the law.

“The gender disparity in such firms does make you wonder why [the disparity] exists and whether it’s justified,” he said, “and to that extent, Pao’s case has provided a useful catalyst for public discussion.”

Even though Pao lost her case, Thomas said she is still hopeful the suit will make people realize that change is needed in the technology industry.

“[This case] did much in exposing the kinds of discriminatory treatment that women still encounter,” she said. “So much of employment is not publicly transparent, it helps to have modern reminders to ignite the demand for change.”