Ellen Pao Is 'a Rosa Parks' for Women in Silicon Valley

adam419 · on March 31, 2015

I think it's evident of how strong this narrative of the day is that newspapers keep churning this stuff out despite the fact she unanimously lost the case as decided by a jury of her peers.

If she had won, how many newspapers do you think would be publishing articles giving Kleiner Perkins the benefit of the doubt?

brighteyes · on March 31, 2015

The loss wasn't unanimous (it was 10-2 and 9-3), but your point is valid, I think. The narrative is so strong, evidence doesn't seem to matter. For example, the article says,

> “Ellen’s story is the exact same as everyone else's, which is the story of a club that is not open to women,” said Rebecca Eisenberg

If Ellen's story is in fact the exact same as everyone else's, and if a jury of unbiased people (half men and half women, not that it should matter) found that there was not discrimination against Ellen, then that seems to argue against the popular narrative of everpresent sexism.

I'm not saying, and no one should, that sexism doesn't exist in tech. It does in some places. The questions are how common it is, where, and what we can do. But one of the sad things about sexism is that women find themselves thinking things like "did I lose that promotion because of sexism?" and they can't know for certain. This case shows that yes, it's sad and unfair that you can't tell, but sometimes things look like discrimination to you, but an objective eye from outside concludes that it just looked that way. Again, this isn't fair, but that's just how it is.

Ellen's story might be a common one, but that is a story in which the sexism is sometimes real and sometimes not. The verdict brings us no closer to knowing how often sexism is real in tech. It does show us that the narrative about sexism in tech is a big leap to an unproven conclusion.

tree_of_item · on March 31, 2015

Rosa Parks? Really? Fuck off. Some super highly paid tech person didn't get an even more highly paid position, sued and LOST, and they're comparing her to Rosa Parks? Shirley Hines just spit on the civil rights movement.