Sexual Discrimination Lawsuit Shakes Foundation of a Man’s World of Tech
MEN invented the Internet. And not just any men. Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago.
But are these men trapped in the past even as they create the future?
That’s the debate that has sprung up here since Ellen Pao, a junior partner in her early 40s at the distinguished venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the company and her colleagues there.
The complaint, laced with accusations of professional retaliation after spurned sexual advances, has riveted Silicon Valley, whose venture capitalists generally prefer media attention for their businesses and deals, not themselves. Instead of talking about the New New Thing, people are discussing an old, old problem. And they are taking sides.
Although the accusations have yet to be heard in court, even some of Ms. Pao’s critics concede that she is exposing an uncomfortable truth about Silicon Valley: starting tech companies in 2012 is still a male game, and so is funding them.
Her complaint goes further. It depicts venture capitalists here as a group of 21st-century men who may be hard at work building the 22nd century but, when it comes to dealing with women in the workplace, are stuck firmly in the caveman era — or at least in the 1950s. It’s a portrait that many women in tech find all too familiar.