Ellen Pao Has Some Sage Advice for Dealing With Sexism

Ellen Pao made history when she sued her employer, the powerful Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, for discrimination in 2015. She accused the firm of blocking women and people of color from meetings, email discussions and networking events, and of cultivating a boys-club culture in the office, filled with racist and sexist language. She lost the case but broke open a conversation about the pernicious problems of sexism and racism in the tech industry. Pao went on to become the CEO of Reddit, where she banned revenge porn and harassment. Since leaving Reddit, Pao has gone on to found Project Include with seven other women, a non-profit that aims to increase diversity in tech fields. She chronicles her experiences with sexism in Silicon Valley in her new book, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change. Pao spoke to TIME about what women who experience sexism or harassment in the workplace should do, her reaction to that Google engineer’s memo and how Susan Fowler’s blog post about sexism at Uber is forcing change. TIME: You write in your new book, Reset, about how Kleiner Perkins tried to get you into arbitration, which would have kept your case private. Why did you say no? Ellen Pao: Arbitration is generally part of most employee contracts at large companies in most industries. I think it hinders the free flow of information. It’s supposed to be designed to allow for faster, cheaper resolution. But it often ends up covering bad beh...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized sexism sexism in tech Silicon Valley Source Type: news