Ellen Pao: Reflection of gender bias in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is the home of Apple, Facebook, Google and an extremely low percentage of executive females.

The Valley’s success can be attributed to its companies, where both genders work equally hard on their projects, spending day after day meeting difficult deadlines and striving to revolutionize the world. But when promotions are awarded, the genders do not receive equal recognition. For every 20 individuals promoted in the Silicon Valley, only around three are women, according to Fortune magazine. 

According to Business Insider, women hold a mere 11 percent of executive jobs at Silicon Valley technology companies even though they make up nearly 30 percent of the staff.

For venture capitalist firms like Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, this percentage is even lower, according to Babson College, at 6 percent. The maximum percentage of females who were ever in the venture capitalist industry was 10 percent in 1999.  

With this blatant gender discrimination, Silicon Valley would seem to be ready to make greater efforts to minimize the gender gap, but this has not been the case.

Despite the push for girls to study STEM-related fields, the workforce fails to show significant advancement toward gender equality. The trend seems to be that many women enter STEM fields, but only a few actually reaching the top levels.

Ellen Pao, one of the few successful female venture capitalists, serves as a prime example of female discrimination in the workforce.

An Asian American with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton Harvard University, according to Fortune magazine, Pao was pursuing the American Dream for thousands of individuals.

But a court case decided on March 27 changed all that. The case decided the question of whether Pao fell victim to gender bias at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.

According to Pao, a relationship she had with co-worker Ajit Nazre had  fallen apart. Soon after the breakup, she allegedly found herself being ignored, “omitted from several business meetings, and undermined with her portfolio companies,” according to Fortune magazine.

Pao later filed for sex discrimination, but a jury’s final verdict exonerated the firm from any sort of gender bias.

The jury’s justification was that Pao seemed to truly not be working to the best of her ability at the firm. Pao was criticized for not having the characteristics necessary for a venture capitalist and for being too reserved. However, it is unclear whether her performance reports were poor as a result of her genuinely insufficient business-related actions or because her coworkers were simply not fond of her previous relationship with a coworker and wrongly correlated business with personal relationships.

Although the verdict has stirred much controversy, both sides can agree that the case shed light on the disparity between female and male roles in both the workforce and daily life.

As Pao said, “if we do not share our stories and shine light on inequalities, things will not change.”

At Pao’s firm, and at most companies in the Silicon Valley, there exists an unfair double standard. Women are scolded for being aggressive, while men are rewarded for their “persistence.”  The men then go on to be promoted, while the just as qualified women are left behind.

Silicon Valley companies need to realize that the issue of gender discrimination is alive and well; until real equality becomes the norm, stories similar to that of Pao’s will be hidden behind the booming businesses of a technological era.