“Can you take a joke?” The question isn’t sexist or discriminatory in itself. But put it into the context of a job interview, where the employer (male) has just told you (a woman) that the company is very male dominated, and “banter” is common. What’s the implication now?

“Can you make me a cup of tea?” Not inherently sexist. But what if the question is addressed to a colleague who has just walked into a meeting, whose job description doesn’t include making refreshments, and who just happens to be the only woman in the room?

What if this kind of situation is repeated over and over again?

For many women, working life is littered with questions and comments, sometimes so subtle that they feel meaningless, sometimes loaded with clear intent, which have an insidious cumulative impact. From the offhand description of your all-female team as “girls”, to the colleague who assumes your male PA is your superior. From the appraisal that casually mentions appearance, to the senior colleague who shakes hands with every man in the room but coincidentally seems to miss out the two women. The meeting where a woman puts forward an idea to a muted response only to have it repeated five minutes later by a male colleague to noisy approval. How on earth do you substantiate, at some future moment, that any one such incident happened at all? And, should your career not progress as quickly as those of your male colleagues, how can you prove whether the two things are related?

The answer, if Ellen Pao’s experience is anything to go by, is that you can’t.

Last month, Pao lost a sexual discrimination case against her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The trial included descriptions of a “boys’ club” atmosphere, including all-male trips and inappropriate advances from senior male partners to junior female colleagues. Or, as Pao herself has since described gender bias in Silicon Valley, “death by a thousand cuts”.

In the eyes of the court, there wasn’t a substantial enough link between such incidents and the decisions made about Pao’s career to prove discrimination. But the outpouring of responses from other women around the world (just take a look at the #ThankYouEllenPao hashtag) has made it clear that this is something many strongly identify with.

Reacting to the results of the trial, some commentators have triumphantly trotted out the old line that women should suck it up and get tougher about coping with sexism. Others have used Pao’s defeat to suggestthat because of her audacity, tech companies might become even less likely to hire women, fearing similar lawsuits. (Though given the dire current stats on women in tech, I don’t think many of us would point to Pao’s single dissenting voice as the major problem there.)

To me, the outcome suggests something else – that we are looking at this all wrong.



What Pao’s case shows is just how difficult it is for the victim to solve the problem of “low-level” sexism in the workplace. Even if she had won, the high-profile nature of the case would still have saddled her with a permanent legacy likely to hamper her future career. Before you even reach the problem of bad press, many women don’t make it to court in the first place – here in the UK, sex discrimination claims have plummeted by 80% since the introduction of up to £1200 tribunal fees in 2013. And what about women who don’t work at major companies with HR departments, but suffer sexist jibes or unwanted “groping” while working behind a bar or waiting tables?

Fear of being labelled a troublemaker at best, or losing one’s job at worst, is enough to prevent the vast majority of those experiencing sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace from ever speaking out. When the Equal Opportunities Commission found that 30,000 women lose their jobs every year as a result of maternity discrimination, the results also revealed that fewer than 3% ever went to a tribunal to seek financial compensation.

So, while we should encourage women to come forward, it is deeply unrealistic to expect victims to be the ones to fix the problem. But the incentive is there for employers to step up instead. We know it makes business sense for bosses to want the very best of the talent pool to pick from, not just the best of the white, male talent pool. We know that companies with more diverse workforces perform better, and those with more women on boards report higher returns. It’s just common sense to assume that employees who aren’t suffering the stress of harassment or discrimination are likely to perform better.

Companies can tackle workplace gender inequality with a raft of measures, as Pao herself has shown. Knowing that women can be penalised for negotiating, when Pao took over at social media company Reddit, she levelled the playing field by removing that aspect of the hiring process. Other women in tech have also shown how easy it is to make practical, impactful changes – Palo Alto Software CEO Sabrina Parsons’ flexible childcare options for new parents are a prime example. Greater transparency about pay levels, clear reporting processes and company-wide harassment policies might also be effective.

It’s in every company’s interest to tackle the low-level, pervasive sexism that undermines performance, holds back talent and prevents them from getting the very best out of their workforce. So rather than prompting women to fight harder, or warning others not to come forward, the Ellen Pao case should be a wake-up call for employers to “lean in” instead.