Friday, March 27, 2015

Ellen Pao Loses Historic Gender Discrimination Lawsuit Against Kleiner Perkins

I've been seeing articles about this case for weeks.

For example, at LAT last week, "Win or lose, discrimination suit is having an effect on Silicon Valley."

Well, she lost.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Kleiner Perkins prevails in Ellen Pao sex-bias case":
Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers did not discriminate against former junior partner Ellen Pao for her gender, nor fire her because she filed a high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit against the firm, a jury found on Friday.

A six-man, six-woman San Francisco Superior Court jury sided in favor of Kleiner Perkins on all claims after more than two days of deliberation and more than four weeks of testimony that was closely watched by Silicon Valley and around the country as tensions over the lack of diversity in the technology industry have swelled.

The verdict was a major victory for Kleiner Perkins, for which the trial had revealed an at times unflattering portrait of a firm that had fallen from its glory days as an early investor in companies such as Google and Amazon.

Pao filed suit against Kleiner Perkins in 2012 for $16 million in damages for gender discrimination and retaliation, plus unspecified punitive damages. She alleged that Kleiner Perkins had promoted male partners over equally qualified women at the firm, including herself, and then retaliated against her for raising concerns about the firm’s gender dynamics by failing to promote her and finally firing her. Pao, now interim CEO of the message board site Reddit, was fired after seven years at the firm following her 2012 lawsuit...
Keep reading.

0 comments: