Ellen Pao lost the landmark Silicon Valley sexual discrimination case

Silicon Valley, which is better known for its fronts in Technology, was in the news over the past few weeks due to the much talked about sexual discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed by a former technology venture capitalist Ellen Pao.

Ellen Pao had lodged a lawsuit owing to innumerable reports of sexual and racial discrimination reports that were lodged by innumerable women working in the Silicon Valley. She, herself claimed to be one such victim of discrimination from a venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB).

After a gripping four week trial session, the jury found that the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB) were not guilty of any discrimination of any sorts against Ellen Pao, presently the interim CEO of Reddit. Initially Pao’s lawyer had stated that at Kleiner, the male employees discriminated with respect to culture against a talented woman. On the other hand, the lawyer for Kleiner Perkins said that the loss of the lawsuit was inevitable as the claims made on Pao’s part were baseless.

The jury consisting of  six men and six women also thought the same as they decided that Ellen Pao was fired because she was not good at what was expected of her at work. In fact, according to the Jury, Ellen Pao was divisive and was not at all a team player. Ellen Pao had claimed a whopping $16 million as a monetary penalty to be given owning to income damages.

The lawsuit had taken the internet media by a swirl as gender and racial discrimination is an  extremely sensitive issue. There have been many reports of such instances in the past, but not a lot received the limelight as the Ellen Pao case. Kleiner and Perkins were backed by quite a few well known companies all throughout the trials.

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