Survey: Asian American women least likely to hold leadership roles in tech

By Louis Chan
REPRINTED FROM ASAM NEWS

DIANE KENG'S youthful appearance belies her stature.

At 18, she founded her first start up, My Weboo, during her senior year of high school.

Five years later in 2015, she launched Breinify, an artificial intelligence startup where she currently serves as CEO.

Keng is an outlier.

A new survey of 582 women in technology by Girls in Tech has found that Asian American women are least likely to hold leadership roles.

More than 19 percent who answered the poll questions were Asian Americans.

Almost 36 percent of the Hispanics polled identified themselves as a Director, VP, C-Level, or CEO compared to hite/Caucasian 34 percent, Black/African American 21 percent, and Asian/Pacific Islander 20 percent.

“I do think that Asian women holding the smallest percentage in leadership roles has some cultural swaying to it,” said Keng to AsAmNews. “One, I think upbringing is a big part of shaping who we are. I am lucky to have parents who are both logical, creative, and big believers of fighting for what you believe in. They did not push me to be in one profession or another.”

Second she sees a lack of Asian women role models.

“What I’m about to say is probably true for many cultures and not meant to sound restrictive. But growing up, I always saw Asian women sacrifice their jobs for their children. These are women who had great education and high level jobs who decided to take a break so that they can raise their kids. I think this is an amazingly valiant sacrifice. But with this, it also means less women have the opportunity to be in the leadership positions because of the huge gap of time between work.”

Girls in Tech is a non-profit dedicated to the education and empowerment of girls and women worldwide who are passionate about technology. It was founded in 2007 by Adriana Gascoigne who echoed some of Keng’s thoughts.

“While it’s hard for me to speak for an entire ethnic group, I believe this has a lot to do with cultural upbringing,” said Gascoigne to AsAmNews. “Asian American women growing up are often tasked with taking a backseat to male siblings, even when they are older. Furthermore, many Asian cultures teach their children to respect their elders — almost to a point of fault — that may negatively impact their chances for promotion. Is this all Asian women? Absolutely not, but it’s important to take into account the ways parents may be rearing their children from their own upbringing.”

Gascoigne also points out that the numbers for women overall in leadership positions are extremely low across the board, something she see as unacceptable.

“At Girls in Tech we are dedicated to increasing the number of women across the board and that starts with creating a network that fosters growth and support, but also access to other female leaders. The tech sector has been dominated by men in the venture capital ranks, which leads to mostly male-founded companies getting funded. It has to start from the top down.”

Keng says when people look at her, they don’t see an engineer, much less someone who works in artificial intelligence.

“Often times I get invited for meetings which I think will be business related but rather it is for me to find out that the guy is single and ready to mingle,” she said.

Sexual harassment is a real problem in the work world, technology is no exception. Keng sees accusations often turning into a he said, she said scenario.

“I’ve had female friends that missed out on great opportunities because they would rather be safe than to be put in a scenario where something bad but not provable actions can happen.”

The Girls in Tech poll also asked questions about sexual harassment, gender discrimination and the presidential election.

You can read the full results here.

TGIF FEATURE: "Today Show" looks into the gender gap in Silicon Valley

NBC's Today Show launched a special series this week titled "The Women of Silicon Valley." To start the series hosted by Natalie Morales, the Today Show interviewed two Asian/American women whose actions were instrumental to bringing high-tech's gender gap issue to the forefront, Tracy Chou and Isis Anchalee.

For Tracy Chou's Today Show video, click here.

Despite the few highly visible women executives past and present, such as presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, who at one time headed up Hewlett Packard, and Marissa Mayer, who is Yahoo's CEO, women have been highly underrepresented in the industry as a whole.

It wasn't until Chou asked for the hiring data from her own company, Pinterest, did the industry begin talking about the inequality within Silicon Valley. Since then, the industry giants such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and others conduct their own surveys. Lo and behold, their data confirmed the gender gap and also the lack of diversity.

Isis Anchalee, founded #ILookLikeAnEngineer. Click here for her video.

Back in August, Isis Anchalee Wenger suddenly became the face — quite literally — of female engineers working in Silicon Valley.

RELATED: Asians hit a bamboo ceiling 

The 23-year-old started #ILookLikeAnEngineer on Twitter after an ad featuring her as a platform engineer at tech consulting firm OneLogin sparked a backlash, with people on social media expressing doubts about her profession.

The response to the disbelieving response was overwhelming with engineers around the world sending photos of themselves to #ILookLikeAnEngineer. A crowd-funding drive raised money to place billboards and other paraphanalia around the San Francisco Bay Area with the now famous hashtag trying to break the stereotype of who can be an engineer.

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Ellen Pao refuses settlement but drops discrimination lawsuit vs. Silicon Valley firm

Ellen Pao

AN ASIAN/AMERICAN woman's historic lawsuit that exposed Silicon Valley's dark underbelly is over.

In a statement released yesterday (Sept. 10) to Re/Code, Ellen Pao said she would not pursue an appeal against her former employer, the storied venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Her suit claimed gender discrimination and retaliation from her bosses.

Pao lost the case in a jury trial in San Francisco earlier this year and was weighing her next steps.

“I think I brought these important issues to the forefront of the conversation, but the online aggression has had a toll on me and my family,” she said. “That so many people heard what I had to say, against all that was brought to bear against me, is a testament to the depth of the problem related to women and tech … [But] I have gone as far as I can go and cannot commit the resources and time that would be needed to continue.”

Pao's full statement.

As part of the end of the lawsuit, Pao said she would pay Kleiner Perkins close to $276,000 in legal fees, which carried a 10 percent annual interest. But Kleiner had previously said it would waive those fees if she dropped the appeal, so it is not clear if Pao will be on the hook for those costs that included witness fees.

Pao did not settle with Kleiner Perkins because she didn’t want to be prevented from speaking about the case, she said. "Settlement might have provided me with financial benefits, but only at the great cost of silence," Pao said. "I refuse to be silent on these important issues."

That means she’s still liable for $276,000 in legal fees, though Kleiner previously said the firm would waive the fees if Pao dropped her appeal.

Still, Pao underscored that the court system in California is stacked against her and others who claim discrimination against their employers. In California, plaintiffs must prove intent, a very difficult process, especially if the discriminatory processes are institutionalized as the way of doing business. 

RELATED: Three Asian/American women challenge Silicon Valley bias

“I think it is wrong that employees have to pay in this situation, but I simply cannot afford the risks of more costs to fight a firm with massive PR and legal resources,” she said. “The court system is not set up to create an even playing field.”

Kleiner has asserted since it won the trial earlier this year that Pao had no grounds for appeal, which Pao did not agree with. In a statement, she said: “To be clear, Kleiner and I have not reached any agreement to settle this matter. Settlement might have provided me with financial benefits, but only at the great cost of silence.”

naisaglobal graphic

Kleiner Perkins issued this statement: “We are glad to put this trial behind us. There is no question diversity in the workplace is an important issue. KPCB remains committed to supporting women and minorities in venture capital and technology both inside our firm and within our industry.”

The high tech industry's problem with diversity has been a hot topic in boardrooms since they released their workforce numbers a few years ago. What the records of their hiring practices showed was an overall lack of Latinos and African/Americans and the small number of high-level Asian/American executives and managers even though Asian/Americans make up a large portion of their workforce. 

"I have a request for all companies: Please don’t try to silence employees who raise discrimination and harassment concerns," Pao wrote in her op-ed. "Instead allow balanced and complete perspectives to come out publicly so we can all learn and improve. I and many others are eager to hear more stories being shared by women and minorities. I turned down offers to settle so I can keep telling mine. We need to keep telling our stories and educating people on how it can be that women and minorities form such a small fraction of our investor base, our tech workforce and our leadership."

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#ILookLikeAnEngineer sparks new look at Silicon Valley workforce and board room diversity

SOMETIMES, the stars align and a couple of unrelated events occur that by themselves would create a spark, but put them together and you get a supernova.

• When OneLogin launched an advertising campaign for engineers, they didn't expect to create an Internet star. When she agreed to let her company use her picture to recruit engineers, platform engineer Isis Anchalee, didn't expect the reaction her post would cause.

• At about the same time, Black Congressional Caucus visited several firms in Silicon Valley to encourage them to do more to hire more African Americans and other minorities, including women so that the tech industry would better reflect the population.

• In the nation's capitol, President Barack Obama launched Startup America, a campaign to increase opportunity for a wider demographic and to increase diversity in Silicon Valley's workforce and board rooms.

"Just three percent of America’s venture capital-backed startups are led by women, and only around one percent are led by African-Americans," the White House announcement read. "At present, only about four percent of U.S.-based venture capital investors are women."

President Obama meets with some of the innovators who took part in the Demo Day.

The announcement was made at the first annual White House Demo Day as part of the President’s new initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate technological entrepreneurship. 

Some 40 venture capital firms have joined the president's initiative, promising to boost opportunities for underserved minorities. Institutional investors like CalPERS, the state pension fund, committed up to $11 billion in investments for emerging and transitioning managers. High-tech companies said they would adopt a variation on the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule” for coaches, a requirement that they consult a diverse applicant pool for senior executive posts.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article29994513.html#storylink=cpy

Meanwhile, a survey of the top 20 U.S. technology firms found that of the 189 members of corporate boards, only three directors are African/American. “African/Americans have been, quite frankly, locked out of the tech workforce,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oaklalnd, part of the congressional delegation that met last week with tech giants in a 3-day tour of Silicon Valley. 

Indeed, the numbers released from the tech companies seem to support her statement. 

Africa/Americans, Latinos and women are severely underrepresented in every aspect of the industry.

Asians, although 17 percent of the tech workforce, have found it extremely difficult to break through the bamboo ceiling. Despite  their numbers in the workforce, few have been able to climb into the ranks of management and board rooms. 

"The 'bamboo ceiling,' as author Jane Hyun terms it, is hardly limited to technology, but its existence in a sector where Asians are thriving illustrates the intractability of the problem. Hyun blames the workers for the promotion gap, arguing that they need to take a page from Sheryl Sandberg and 'lean in,'" wrote Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.  "But other observers, such as Lisa Lee, a senior diversity manager for Pandora, point to the need for companies to curb their preconceptions about who will make a good leader."

RELATED: Study: Asians hit the bamboo ceiling in high-tech workforce

White males make up the majority of the workforce and almost all of the board members. The few minorities and women who have managed to make it to the highly visible or influential  positions have been the exception, rather than the rule.

Part of problem has been the dominant image of the typical high-tech employee as a white, hoodie-wearing, social awkward white male.

OneLogin's campaign asked Anchalee, one of their employees, to pose for a poster intended to recruit more engineers. The reaction was not what the San Francisco-company expected.

The ad — one of several her company posted in BART stations — received an unexpected backlash of frankly, sexist, critiques, where some people questioned the authenticity of the advertising based because they thought the company used a model instead of a real engineer. (Editor's note: She prefers to use her middle name over the name used in the poster.)

Some of the more printable reactions that was written online include: "This is some weird haphazard branding. I think they want to appeal to women, but are probably just appealing to dudes," reads one typical example Anchalee pulled off Facebook. "But I'm curious people with brains find this quote remotely plausible and if women in particular buy this image of what a female software engineer looks like." 

“The negative opinions about this ad that strangers feel so compelled to share illustrate solid examples of the sexism that plagues tech,” Anchalee wrote in her short blog that she felt compelled to create to answer the doubters and critics.

Isis Anchalee responds to her critics.

In response, 22-year old Anchalee took a photo of herself (above) with the Twitter hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer. The reaction to her response has been amazing. Engineers - women and minorities - began taking pictures of themselves with the Twitter hashtag. 

"News flash: this isn't by any means an attempt to label 'what female engineers look like,' " she wrote. "This is literally just ME, an example of ONE engineer at OneLogin."

"I doubt that most of you know me. I am a passionate self-taught engineer, extreme introvert, science-nerd, anime-lover, college dropout, hip hop dancer, yoga teacher/hoop-dance teacher, really authentic friend and HUMAN(omg?!). In fact, if you knew me you would probably know that being famous is one of my biggest nightmares; seriously right up there with falling into a porta potty. I keep to myself most of the time and generally prefer when others mind their own business too," wrote Anchalee.

Her hashtag has absolutely skyrocketed beyond her expectations. A fundraising campaign has been started (with Anchalee's approval) on Indiegogo to raise enough money to put up a billboard in San Francisco celebrating and encouraging diversity in the high-tech industry. 

“People have taken the message I started and are continuing the conversation themselves,” Anchalee says. “I am absolutely taken with gratitude.”

#ILookLikeAnEngineer is going beyond the Internet. There are now poster, t-shirts and socks with the hashtag.

There's definitely a movement to increase the diversity of the high-tech industry's workforce. Industry giants like Apple, Google, Pinterest, Yahoo and others are - frankly embarrassed by their statistics in hiring - have pledged millions of dollar in initiatives to improve their workforce diversity. Besides an implementation of the Rooney Rule, the companies will expand their recruitment efforts at colleges and universities outside of the Bay Area, employees will be sent to job fairs that attract minority applicants, and internship programs will be widened to include more African Americans, Latinos and women.

In a few years, if these efforts work, the companies' business will improve and competitive in the world stage, we will be able to draw our best and brightest from a wider pool of applicants, colleges and universities and America will be better off for it. 

If you, your daughter, niece, sister or any of the women in your life want to be inspired, or just want to bust open those old stereotypes, check out #ILookLikeAnEngineer, or Anchalee's Twitter account.

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Ellen Pao steps down from Reddit, are the trolls winning?

Ellen Pao leaves Reddit

REDDIT calls itself, "the front page of the Internet." For Ellen Pao, it was a rabbit hole into a world that got curiouser and curiouser. 

"The Internet started as a bastion for free expression. It encouraged broad engagement and a diversity of ideas," Pao wrote in the Washington Post. "Over time, however, that openness has enabled the harassment of people for their views, experiences, appearances or demographic backgrounds. Balancing free expression with privacy and the protection of participants has always been a challenge for open-content platforms on the Internet. But that balancing act is getting harder. The trolls are winning."

It has not been a good year for Pao, who earlier lost a sexism lawsuit vs. a former employer, venture capitalist firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; and then, three weeks ago, she lost her job as Interim CEO of Reddit.

Since her departure - she resigned, not fired - the Reddit universe has been in turmoil. Some say she was set up to fail.

The freedom given to Reddit's unpaid moderators to monitor the communities, or "subreddits," also gave rise to racist and sexist sites under the guise of freedom of speech. The hate and venom on these sites are the main reason Reddit has had difficulty win advertisers, an Internet platform's lifeblood.

Pao was tasked to rid the platform of those subreddits. Along the way, she released a popular employee, Victoria Taylor. Even though one other bosses asked to her fire Taylor, the redditors blamed her. The backlash came back a hundred fold.

Pam's critics claimed censorship. In protest, some of the moderators shut down their sites. An online petition circulated and reportedly collected 200,000 signatures calling for Pao's firing.

However, there may be something more behind all that hate and venom hurled at Pao that shows the dark side of the Internet.

Pao, a lawyer and businesswoman who has a resume centered in Silicon Valley, inspired much controversy and vitriol from numerous Reddit users when she decided first to ban several popular subreddits dedicated to racist, sexist, and fat-shaming posts; and then to fire popular employee Victoria Taylor, administrator for the site's popular "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) subreddit where celebrities and other notable personalities field questions from users.

Pao was hired eight months ago to replace previous CEO Yishan Wong, who stepped down amidst another bout of controversy surrounding, among other things, his public conflict with a former employee. 

In her own post on Reddit, Pao reaffirmed the sentiment behind both her closing of the aforementioned subreddits and her reaction to vitriol on the site following both unpopular decisions:

"I just want to remind everyone that I am just another human; I have a family, and I have feelings. Everyone attacked on reddit is just another person like you and me. When people make something up to attack me or someone else, it spreads, and we eventually will see it. And we will feel bad, not just about what was said. Also because it undercuts the authenticity of reddit and shakes our faith in humanity."

Pao will be replaced by site co-founder Steve Huffman.

Last week, Reddit's chief engineer, Bethane Blount, announced her resignation after just two months on the job.

Although she claims her departure is not related to Pao's resignation, Blount also said she believed Pao’s exit was an indirect consequence of gender discrimination, and that Pao had been placed on a “glass cliff.” It is a term used to describe women being set up for failure by being put in leadership roles during crises. According to Re/code: 

“Victoria wasn’t on a glass cliff. But it’s hard for me to see it any other way than Ellen was,” Blount said. However, she added that “I wouldn’t say my decision to leave was directly related to my gender.”

Being named "Interim" CEO weakened her authority and made her an easy target for long-time Reddit regulars.

Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, who is replacing Pao, added that he thought some of the messaging around Pao had gotten extremely ugly. “I don’t think Ellen has been in a position to defend herself,” he said. “It’s okay for redditors to be angry, but I thought some users crossed the line when it became personal.”

Board head Sam Altman described the vile — and some have described as misogynistic — criticisms of Pao in his memo to the site.
“It was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. The reduction in compassion that happens when we’re all behind computer screens is not good for the world. People are still people even if there is Internet between you,” he wrote. 

We can't ignore that 75 percent of Reddit users are males who have claimed the Internet as their playground and they don't want some outsider - especially a woman - interjecting herself in their exclusive game.

Seen from afar, Reddit is not about creating a virtual community, its about the giving an individual a sense of power, whether they deserve it or not, and whether the redditor uses it for good or evil is not considered. That internal struggle to define Reddit is what claimed Pao as collateral damage.

Pao isn't the first woman to be bullied by the Internet. Writer Jessica Valenti of the Guardian writes if she could start over, she might prefer to be completely anonymous on the Internet. “I don’t know that I would do it under my real name,” she tells young women who are interested in writing about feminism. It’s “not just the physical safety concerns but the emotional ramifications” of constant, round-the-clock abuse.

“If the Reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion, it may be a great website but it will never be a truly great community,” wrote Altman.

But, there's a silver lining in this dark story. As the Reddit story played out into its third week, the tide began to turn. Huffman swore that he would continue to purge Reddit of its hate-filled content.

So let's let Ellen Pao have the last word:

"So it’s left to all of us to figure it out, to call out abuse when we see it. As the trolls on Reddit grew louder and more harassing in recent weeks, another group of users became more vocal. First a few sent positive messages," said Pao in an oped in the Washington Post published over the weekend. "Then a few more. Soon, I was receiving hundreds of messages a day, and at one point thousands. These messages were thoughtful, well-written and heartfelt, in stark contrast to the trolling messages, which were usually made up of little more than four-letter words."

The battle continues. And ... the body count keeps rising.

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Study: Asians hit a bamboo ceiling in the high tech industry

 Diversification efforts at Google are underway.

BAMBOO is pliant, but strong. According to a new report, Asian men in Silicon Valley find it difficult to break through the Bamboo Ceiling if they try advancing to the leadership ranks.

Lest we forget, besides the gender gap exposed in the Ellen Pao lawsuit, the high tech industry is still grappling with its well documented diversity divide.

It is most evident in the well-stocked cafeterias and coffee cafes of the high tech headquarters in San Francisco and down the peninsula in Silicon Valley. While you see a plethora of beige-skinned Asian faces downing the gourmet fare offered by the companies, in the board rooms, the shade is a good deal paler.

Google, Yahoo and other major technology companies are far more inclined to hire Asians as computer programmers than to promote them to become managers or executives, according to a study released May 6.

The analysis brought to light what is obvious to the Asian American community, the high tech giants have no problem in hiring Asian as workers in non-management positions, but when picking managers and executives, human resources prefer to hire European American men.

RELATED: Three Asian women challenge Silicon Valley culture

To be clear, there are more minorities in executive positions than there were three years ago, but progress is moving at a snail's pace. Fixing Silicon Valley's apparent preference for white males won't happen quickly.

"We have a lot more work to do," said Laszlo Bock, Google's head of human resources or as Google would say, 'people operations.'For a long time we'll have a lot more work to do."

Ascend, a group focused on Asian business issues, based its conclusions on 2013 data filed with U.S. employment regulators by five Silicon Valley companies — Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and LinkedIn Corp.

Minorities seek a place at the table in Silicon Valley.

"If you step in the cafeteria of any of these five companies, you will see plenty of Asian talent around," said Denise Peck, a co-author of the Ascend study and former vice president at computer networking equipment maker Cisco Systems. "It's only when you walk into the executive suites at these companies that you might see a problem."

Google knows it's got problems with diversity among its ranks, and it was one of the first in Silicon Valley to say so.

The search giant first released statistics last May about women and minorities in its workforce, and by its own admission they were bad. So, it's tried to find fixes, and it's talked about some of those programs publicly. One of them focuses on what it calls "unconscious bias," or cases of discrimination that aren't overt or even intentional, and it now has a program devoted to the problem.

But fixing Silicon Valley's preference for white males won't happen immediately.

"When we released the composition of our workforce almost a year ago, it confirmed what many people suspected: the tech industry needs to do a lot more when it comes to diversity," says vice president of people operations Nancy Lee in her official Google blog.

After their workforce report was released, Google launched several long-term initiatives and spent $115 million to diversify their workers. Other tech firms such as Intel and Apple followed Google's lead and began their own programs. 

The Ascend report found that Asians held 27 percent of the professional jobs yet only 14 percent were executives. For whites, the percentages are reverse: whites held 62 percent of the professional jobs at the studied companies, but filled 80 percent of the executive jobs. Hmmm.

Ascend, a group focusing on Asian business issues, concludes that the lack of Asian executives may be partly blamed on cultural differences. It's curious that a group focusing on Asian issues should bring up that old stereotype of the nonassertive Asian male. I could never understand how the self-promotion and braggadocio is admired in white males, but the nose-to-the-grindstone, lead-by-example and working as a team are seen as weaknesses in Asian males.

What should have been concluded is that the top leaders tend to prefer seeing themselves in their underling managers. The current leadership want to surround themselves with people with whom they feel comfortable, with whom they can indulge in common pursuits, have drinks, play video games, share joke, play golf. You know, sort of like a buddy.

In many ways, Asian males face the same double standard often placed on women in the workplace: assertive males good, assertive women bitches.

"With an organization of our size, meaningful change will take time," wrote Lee in her blog.  "From one year to the next, bit by bit, our progress will inch forward."

The nerd culture that spawned many of the innovators who in turn gave birth to Silicon Valley, also gave rise to the 21st century version of the old boys club. In extreme cases, that environment allowed, some say even encouraged, distorted values of privilege, exclusiveness and misogamy.

Once the high-tech industry can find ways to develop leaders from its Asian workers, then they can begin to grapple with the even worse plight of African Americans and Latinos, who constitute barely a blip in the industry's workforce.  

Though there are signs of change - such as Satya Nadella as Microsoft's CEO - that shift is coming slow. The industry is trying to compensate by investing in education, expanded recruitment efforts and bringing in foreign workers but it will never truly have permanent, institutional change until it can look at itself in the mirror and see an image, not only of its  workforce, but also the world market where lies its future. That, is the bottomline.

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3 Asian women challenge culture of Silicon Valley

Ellen Pao entering the courtroom in San Francisco.

THE IMAGE of a bustling Silicon Valley that prizes drive, entrepreneurship and innovation as harbingers of our future economy is being challenged by ... three ... Asian ... women. 

Since March is Women's History Month, it is fitting that we bring your attention to these three women who are turning the high-tech industry inside out with their allegations of gender discrimination.

The mythic Horatio Alger-story of a bunch of guys tinkering in their garage then becoming billionaires also carries with it the negative image of a closed society of rich, socially inept, immature ol' boys club where women are viewed as trophies and routinely passed over for promotion because they don't fit into that mold. 

Facebook, Twitter and the influential venture capital company, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, are facing lawsuits for gender discrimination.

Ellen Pao may have lost her lawsuit against the influential venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers today, March 27 but she inspired others to file their lawsuits against their former employers. Tina Huang, former Twitter employee, and Chia Hong, formerly of Facebook, filed their suits within a week of each other as the world awaited the outcome of jury deliberations in Pao's lawsuit.

All of their former employers deny the charges. Their cases sheds light on the dark side of the high tech industry that has long been criticized for its lack of diversity.

Based on statistics gathered from the companies themselves, white males make up about 70 percent of the high tech workforce. I am assuming that that percentage is even greater in the upper echelon levels.

The arguments in Ellen Pao's case vs. Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers concluded March 25 and we're holding our breath awaiting the decision the jury of six men and six women.

During the trial, the inner workings of one of the best known venture capital firms was exposed and their behavior - even if Pao's allegations are exaggerated or misinterpreted - doesn't paint a pretty picture: men's only meetings and outings, asking high-level women executives to act as secretaries during meetings, innuendos and the assumptions that the women are there for window dressing.

Kleiner Perkins lawyers' strategy of attempting to blame the victim is similar to the way some defense lawyers attack allegations of rape; blame the victim, question their qualifications, paint her as a disgruntled rejected woman.

Pao's attorney's closing statement said she was as qualified if not more so, than her male peers who received promotions. 

It is a reflection of our society that an aggressive woman is seen as "presumptuous" while an aggressive man is praised as "having balls."

A New York Times article wrote that Pao was told, “she didn’t speak up enough and was too passive — but also that she spoke up too much and was pushy and entitled.” 

According to Fortune magazine, only 4% of senior venture capitalists are women. So, I guess one can argue that the Pao's experience is not reflective of the venture capitalists  because there are not enough women in high-level positions. Uh ... isn't that part of the problem, guys? Many firms don't even have women in management positions.

The suits vs. Twitter and Facebook, address the hardware and software segments of the industry where the stats also seem to indicate that the industry of the future, which prides itself on innovation and being ahead of the curve, was following the same model of other older businesses - read, "good-ol'-(white)-boys" club.

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote in an editorial: "Ellen Pao's loss is anything but a win for Silicon Valley's status quo. The challenges she raised about the male-dominated culture that controls the heart of the innovation economy can't be dismissed."

Silicon Valley cannot - must not - go back to the way it was before the trial. The culture that fed upon itself by stealing each others employees and hiring people who had an affinity for T-shirts and hoodies knows it's time is past and it needs to diversify in order to keep its business viable and relevant. In other words, its good for business to diversify its workforce. 

Because of the lawsuits by the three Asian women, the hiring practices of tech firms are in the glare of the spotlight. 

As the news of Pao's trial verdict spread throughout the restaurants, bars and coffee shops of the valley, almost lost in the hubbub were the stories below; 

RELATED: 
Asians hit a bamboo ceiling in Silicon Valley
Google hires woman CFO and made her the highest paid woman in the tech world.
eBay puts two more women on its board of directors

Diversification starts at the top. Let's hope that message trickles all the way down throughout the companies' office culture.

By the way, once and for all: can we dump that tired old stereotype of Asian women being demure, obedient, submissive, walk-3-paces-behind-the-man, sex slaves? Shift-alt-delete!

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