Silicon Valley sexism

“For years as I carved a path in venture capital, I believed that if I did what I’d earlier to succeed at the highest levels of academia and law and business, I could rise there, too. I am the daughter of Chinese immigrants, I’ve always believed in keeping my head down and forging ahead. I work hard and do my best, with education, skills and sheer graft” Ellen Pao writes in her memoir Reset.

In 2012, Pao sued her employer of seven years, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm that backed Google and Amazon.  Her $16m damages gender discrimination and workplace retaliation case hinged on her not getting promotion and pay review after she ended a brief affair with a partner. Her book delineates the fine line that a professional woman in a male-dominated field will, at some point, most likely find herself treading, and the failed discrimination lawsuit goes on to make a strong case about Silicon Valley sexism.   “If you talk, you talk too much, If you don’t talk, you’re too quiet. You don’t own the room. If you want to protect your work, you’re not a team player. Your elbows are too sharp.” Pao  spend her childhood in Maplewood, New Jersey, as the middle daughter of high-achieving Chinese immigrants, who drummed their children with tenacious work ethic and a blatant belief in the American dream  According Pao her parents views “ America was a land of boundless potential, any experience of exclusion could be solved like an engineering problem search, seek and solve. Her parents had kept their heads down and worked hard and they taught their daughters to do the same”.

Having studied electrical engineering at Princeton and Law at Harvard Law School, two years as a lawyer and an MBA at Harvard Business School she arrived at Silicon Valley to take on roles at start-ups.

While working with Kleiner she said “You can’t always get ahead by working hard if you’re not part of “In Crowd”. The culture is designed to keep out people who are not white men and this is the way the industry is set up. Despite Asians being well represented in Silicon Valley, the “bamboo ceiling” means they don’t make it to the upper echelons. Introverted, analytical people often women were undervalued.”  Here Pao is addressing the Silicon Valley barriers that women face in scaling the corporate ladder, both are wealthy and privileged beyond the dreams of most.

Pao points out in her book, about wider cultural problems, if a company only decides to encourage loud, pushy men to have their views heard, what ideas are they missing out on others. Silicon Valley especially is missing out on advances in employment practices made over decades in other areas of corporate culture.

Ellen K Pao traces the journey of disillusionment that resulted in the lawsuit she brought against her former employer, although she lost her case in 2015, after a gruelling cross-examination by the other side attorney, who presented into evidence a “resentment” chart  Pao kept of her colleagues and accused Pao of “never” having “ done anything for women”.

Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao Spiegel & Grau $28, 288 pages