SAN FRANCISCO — A long legal battle over accusations that a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm demeaned women and held them to a different standard than their male colleagues became a flash point in the ongoing discussion about gender inequity at elite technology and venture capital firms.
Although Ellen Pao lost her lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Silicon Valley observers say her case and the attention it received will embolden women in the industry and continue to spur firms to examine their practices and cultures for gender bias.
“This case has been a real wake-up call for the technology industry in general and the venture capital community in particular,” said Deborah Rhode, a law professor at Stanford University who teaches gender-equity law.
The jury of six men and six women Friday rejected all of Pao’s claims against Kleiner Perkins, determining the firm did not discriminate against her because she is a woman and did not retaliate against her by failing to promote her and firing her after she filed a sex-discrimination complaint.
Rhode and other experts say Kleiner Perkins and the venture capital industry in general did not come out looking good even though they won the case.
“Venture capital firms recognize it’s not appropriate to be out in the streets celebrating,” said Freada Kapor Klein, founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, a nonprofit that aims to boost minority representation in science, technology, engineering and math fields. “They don’t have the moral high ground.”
Even before the Pao trial started, a succession of employment statistics released during the past 10 months brought the technology industry’s lack of diversity into sharper focus.
Women hold 15 to 20 percent of the technology jobs at Google, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo, according to company disclosures. A study released last year by Babson College in Massachusetts found that women filled just 6 percent of partner-level positions at 139 venture capital firms in 2013.
Before the verdict, Klein said she was contacted by more than a dozen venture capital and technology companies asking how they could improve the environment as a result of Pao’s case.
