Earlier this week, I talked about a lawsuit involving Twitter on the grounds of gender discrimination. This comes in the wake of another major, major Silicon Valley fight over gender discrimination.
The opponents of this fight are Ellen Pao verses her former employer, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm called Kleiner Perkins Caufield. Pao and her attorneys argued she was denied lucrative deals while working as an associate at Kleiner Perkins. ?They argued it was exclusively men that were getting these deals. Pao was eventually fired. Kleiner’s defense countered this, saying Pao was an inconsistent worker and called the lawsuit opportunistic. In a five week trail filled with enough twist and turns for a John Grisham novel, the jury sided with Kleiner Perkins 9-3. The trial grabbed Silicon Valley’s ear.
Though the venture capitalist firm won this battle, Silicon Valley’s war over gender discrimination is far from over. The trial revealed disturbing obstacles and hurdles women often face in technology industries. After the verdict, Pao posted a series of tweets thanking thousands all around the world for their support. Obviously disappointed with the verdict, Pao hope this trail exposed gender issues in the technology and venture capital industries. She also calls on people around the world to help level the playing field for all women and minorities. I think, or at least hope, this will start a long, difficult dialogue on gender and race/ethnicity issues in technology. Maybe this will force some, especially those in hiring, to question their own attitudes on such issues. I don’t know who was in the right in the Pao vs Kleiner case. Obviously I wasn’t there. Maybe the jury got the verdict right. Maybe they got the verdict wrong. I hope the trial and the aftermath serves as a wake-up call to us all in the technology industry to be alert, aware and sensitive to others. Will it?