Ellen Pao Says Gender Issues Won’t ‘Go Away’ After Kleiner Trial
In first interview since losing sexism case, Pao says too many ‘women feel like there’s no way to win’
Former venture capitalist Ellen Pao, at her desk in Reddit’s office in San Francisco, said ‘you need to work through these issues’ and men need to be part of the conversation.
Photo:
Laura Morton for The Wall Street Journal
By
Jeff Elder
Warning “you can’t just hide” from the problem of workplace sexism, Ellen
Pao
says Silicon Valley must continue to work on the issues brought up in her loss to venture capital-firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in a much-watched gender-bias trial.
“You need to work through these issues,” Ms. Pao said in her first interview since the March 27 verdict, “because they are here and they’re not going to go away.”
A jury ruled that Kleiner didn’t discriminate against Ms. Pao, who struggled in vain to be promoted beyond junior partner and ultimately was fired. But she says that having her private life scrutinized during the three-year ordeal since she first sued Kleiner was still worth it.
“It’s not my personality to be out there, and I’m also by nature a very private person, so for me it was a little bit scary,” Ms. Pao, 45, said. “I’m glad I did it. But it was hard.”
Although the treatment of women in Silicon Valley has long been an issue, the case focused a spotlight on the inner-workings of a generally secretive VC industry. Testimony included revelations of an affair between Ms. Pao and another partner, and accusations of a boys-club atmosphere with no clear track for partnership promotions.
Ms. Pao’s personality was also put on trial, with Kleiner attorneys and some witnesses characterizing her as passive-aggressive, disloyal and generally ineffective. “Everything about Ellen Pao was wrong for the point-person role” addressing sexism, said
Lynne Hermle,
the attorney for Kleiner who cross-examined Ms. Pao about her affair and emails in which she criticized co-workers.
Ms. Pao’s attorneys sought to counter that narrative by saying she excelled in many ways and was a supportive colleague, but was treated unfairly during her seven-year career at Kleiner.
“I think everyone has their own perspective, and some people can’t relate to me, and that’s okay,” Ms. Pao said.
Silicon Valley is struggling to reverse declining numbers of women in many sectors, particularly venture capital. The U.S. Census found in a fall 2013 report that “women’s representation in computer occupations has declined since the 1990s,” with women filling just 22% of software developer jobs. In venture capital, the numbers are even lower. The share of women partners in venture-capital firms declined to 6% in 2014, from 10% in 1999, according to a study from Babson College.
The media put her under a microscope, tuning into every tidbit of testimony, including personal emails and text messages. When Ms. Hermle cross-examined Ms. Pao on her private life and professional shortcomings, some 200 spectators packed the gallery. So many stood along the wall that one person accidentally turned off the light switch.
‘You have this needle that you have to thread, and sometimes it feels like there’s no hole in the needle’—Ellen Pao
During her legal battle, Ms. Pao said many women she didn’t know confided to her their own experiences with gender bias.
“I felt a very strong connection to them,” she said. “They were strangers off the street or in an elevator” some of whom “shared stories that they hadn’t told other people.”
Ms. Pao has received her fair share of support since the verdict, too. A group of women in tech bought a newspaper ad, created a Facebook page and designed T-shirts around the “Thanks, Ellen” slogan. The woman leading that group,
Lori Hobson,
who works in business development in Palo Alto, Calif., said the incentive came from the sentiment expressed by some men that “the verdict has killed the topic.”
Ms. Pao, who was accused in her trial of being both too timid and too aggressive, said “women get criticized on both ends” of the spectrum when it comes to office demeanor.
“You have this needle that you have to thread, and sometimes it feels like there’s no hole in the needle,” Ms. Pao said. “From what I’ve heard from women, they do feel like there’s no way to win. They can’t be aggressive and get this opportunity without being treated like they’ve done something wrong.”
Ms. Pao has returned to her work as interim chief executive of social-media startup Reddit Inc. She spoke to The Wall Street Journal at Reddit’s office in San Francisco with her attorney listening in by phone. She declined to discuss her legal case and its cost, or her husband, Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher, a controversial former hedge-fund manager.
But she was eager to talk about how she could help move the gender discussion forward. Sounding like the Princeton engineering major and Harvard lawyer that she is, Ms. Pao methodically ticked off the measures she is taking to make sure Reddit is addressing the issues she has raised.
Ellen Pao spoke with the media on March 27 after losing in her high profile gender discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins.
Photo:
beck diefenbach/Reuters
Ms. Pao, who said she wants to stay long-term as Reddit’s CEO when a one-year interim period ends, said she has removed salary negotiations from the hiring process because studies show women don’t fare as well as men. She has brought in well-known Silicon Valley diversity consultant Freada Kapor Klein to advise the company. And she has passed on hiring candidates who don’t embrace her priority of building a gender-balanced and multiracial team. “We ask people what they think about diversity, and we did weed people out because of that,” she said.
Reddit, an online forum where users share Web links and hold discussions on a variety of topics, has itself generated controversy for allowing misogynistic comments to proliferate throughout the site. In August, Reddit users began sharing a large number of leaked naked pictures of female celebrities. (The Pew Research Center has found that men, especially ages 18-29, are twice as likely as women to be Reddit users.)
Ms. Pao took over the site three months after the leaked photos were posted and after the former CEO left the company. She said she has since hired more community managers to keep an eye on the website, and helped the company craft new policies on user behavior. In February, the company banned “revenge porn,” or explicit photos of people posted without their consent. “A big part of my job is to uphold those values,” she said.
Before she returned to her desk in the middle of Reddit’s main room, Ms. Pao mused about what advice she would give a young woman who may be facing some of the issues she encountered. “I would tell her to have confidence in herself,” Ms. Pao said, “to know that what she’s doing is important, and to always remember not to let other people change her view of herself.”
Write to
Jeff Elder at
jeff.elder@wsj.com