Ellen Pao: The Woman Who Shook Up the Big Boys Club

If you’ve seen the most recent cover of Fortune Magazine, you’ll see the images of a woman named Ellen Pao.

Her story, as she tells it, is the classic tale of discrimination and retaliation. And if you’ve ever worked at a large law firm or major consulting firm, it’s also a tale you might be familiar with.

It’s the story of the whistleblower who is more of a troublemaker. At least that’s the story that the Big Boys like to spin, once someone complains. The thing is that if you work at one of the high-flying industries — law or finance, for example, you know the unwritten rule: Don’t rock the boat, or you’ll never work in this town again.

And rock the boat is just what Ellen Pao did.

Ellen Pao holds several Ivy League degrees. She’s a Harvard MBA and JD. She took a job at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins and that’s where she claims the trouble started.

She claims that she was passed up for promotions and that while many men got promoted, she didn’t. She was excluded from many meetings after she broke a sexual relationship off with a male junior partner.

Here’s where the story becomes typical of any complaint against a law firm or major finance firm. Once she began complaining, her performance reviews came in weak. The firm contends that her weak performance was the reason that she didn’t get promoted and not the fact that she was a woman.

Pretext

That’s what Kleiner Perkins is trying to establish, writes the San Jose Mercury News. They want to be in a position to say that her lack of advancement was motivated by a reason other than her race or gender (Pao is an Asian-American).

That’s how pretext works in employment discrimination cases. The plaintiff makes a claim of discrimination and the employer has to prove that the adverse action was motivated by something other than a discriminatory motive.

Retaliation

It’s the adverse reaction that occurs once a person makes a complaint.

The Fortune piece mentions that Pao’s career might be ruined. The one decision many employees in the big leagues need to make is whether they are willing to file a discrimination claim, at the expense of their futures in their chosen careers. These are tight-knit industries where people talk and word gets around.

What lies in store for Ellen Pao? Will she work in Silicon Valley again? Will she win her case? Or will it be the classic case of the Big Boys Club, winning again?

Related Resources:

• Philadelphia Employment Lawyers (FindLaw)
• Binders Full of Women: Did Romney Mean ‘Affirmative Action’? (FindLaw’s Philadelphia Employment Law News)
• Employment Discrimination and Problem Interview Questions (FindLaw’s Philadelphia Employment Law Blog)
• Sexual Orientation Discrimination (FindLaw)