Maybe Ellen Pao lost her suit because it defied logic. Firms need talent to prosper, no matter the gender.
ASan Francisco jury late last week rejected a $16 million gender-discrimination lawsuit against a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. This triumph of common sense, though, represents merely a minor setback in the feminist crusade against America’s most vibrant economic sector. The chance that Silicon Valley can preserve its ruthlessly meritocratic culture under a continuing feminist onslaught is slim.
In 2005 plaintiff Ellen Pao got an MBA’s dream job: technical chief of staff to John Doerr, a renowned senior partner with the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Kleiner Perkins was a pioneer in high-tech entrepreneurship, making lucrative early investments in Google and Amazon, among other giants of the Internet age. Mr. Doerr mentored Ms. Pao, treating her, as Ms. Pao put it in an email to him, as a “surrogate daughter.”