What the Legal Profession Can Learn From the Ellen Pao Case
Even if one believes the jury made the right call in Pao's case, most women (and hopefully a growing number of men) will acknowledge that women are held to a different standard than men.
April 22, 2015 at 09:00 AM
4 minute read
As has been amply publicized, Ellen Pao lost her discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, the San Francisco venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. But even if one believes the jury made the right call in Pao's case, most women (and hopefully a growing number of men) will acknowledge that women are held to a different standard than men.
Pao wasn't combatting a “Mad Men”-era policy of “we don't promote women,” and she wasn't alleging that she was groped by a superior or chased around a desk. Pao claimed something much harder to prove: that her employer maintained a corporate culture that devalued the contributions of women and held them to a persistent double standard that rewarded her male colleagues for behavior that was held against her.
Unfortunately for Pao, the jury didn't agree with her. And it's no surprise. Subtle discrimination the likes of which Pao claimed to be subjected to is hard to prove and wildly open to interpretation. And although the male-dominated world of Silicon Valley VCs seems to uniquely nurture such a culture, there's no question it exists in the legal profession as well.
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