硅谷性別歧視案原告鮑康如敗訴

The woman who lost a landmark sex discrimination case for the venture capital industry hopes her lawsuit will help change sexism in Silicon Valley.

在一場具有里程碑意義的風投產業性別歧視案中敗訴的鮑康如(Ellen Pao)表示，她希望她的訴訟能有助於硅谷改變對女性的歧視。

Ellen Pao, a former junior partner of famed venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, said sexism needed to be tackled by Silicon Valley to produce “better cultures” and “better products”.

鮑康如曾是著名風投公司凱鵬華盈(Kleiner Perkins)一名次要合夥人。她說，硅谷要想創造“更好的文化”、提供“更好的產品”，就必須解決性別歧視的問題。

“Women shouldn’t have to go through this legal experience to fix” the problem of under-representation in the tech industry, she said in her first public remarks since losing the bulk of her gender bias claim last month against the company that was early an investor in Google and Facebook.

鮑康如表示，對於高科技產業中這個未得到充分暴露的問題，“不應由婦女通過這種法律行爲來糾正”。這是她指控凱鵬華盈性別歧視但敗訴以來的首次公開講話。凱鵬華盈曾是谷歌(Google)和Facebook的早期投資方。

“I’d love to see a day where there are 50 per cent women in these really powerful institutions that have a huge impact on what services and technologies are brought to the world,” Ms Pao told Katie Couric, the American TV journalist, in an interview.

在接受美國電視新聞記者凱蒂•庫裏克(Katie Couric)採訪時，鮑康如表示：“這樣的機構影響力極大，會對向世界提供什麼樣的服務和科技產生巨大影響。我希望，有一天能看到這種機構中女性的比例達到50%。”

Ms Pao’s case comes amid a fierce debate in Silicon Valley about why female entrepreneurs and venture capitalists remain a tiny minority despite gains by women in other historically male-dominated fields such as medicine and law.

鮑康如提出訴訟之際，硅谷正發生一場激烈爭論，核心是：雖然在醫療和法律等傳統中由男性主導的其他領域中婦女取得了巨大成就，爲何在硅谷，女性企業家和風險投資家卻依然只佔極小比例。

Only 6 per cent of venture capitalist partners in the US are women, a decline from 10 per cent in 1999, according to a report from Babson College researchers.

根據巴布森商學院(Babson College)研究人員的一份報告，美國風險投資合夥人中女性的比例只有6%。

Ms Pao had alleged in her case, seeking some $16m in damages, that Kleiner Perkins failed to provide “a level playing field” for staff. However, a jury in San Francisco ruled after the month-long case that Kleiner Perkins had not discriminated against her because of her gender.

在鮑康如的訴訟案中，她要求得到大約1600萬美元的賠償金，理由是凱鵬華盈未能爲員工提供“公平的競爭環境”。然而，在持續了一個月的庭審之後，舊金山一個陪審團裁定，凱鵬華盈並未因鮑康如的性別歧視她。

Asked by Ms Couric whether she was considering an appeal, she said she could not comment on the case but that she and her legal team were “in the midst of making some decisions”.

在被庫裏克問到是否考慮上訴時，鮑康如表示她不會置評該案，不過她表示她和她的法律團隊“正要做出一些決定”。

Despite the verdict and having her personal life publicly scrutinised, she told the Wall Street Journal that she did not regret going to court: “I’ve told my story to highlight what the problem is. It’s not about me.”

她告訴《華爾街日報》(WSJ)，雖然得到了這一判決，併爲此將個人生活置於公衆審視之下，她仍不後悔走上法庭：“我講出了我的故事，讓人們注意到了問題所在。這並不是我個人的問題。”

She said in an interview that working in the tech industry was like “death by a thousand cuts” for women because they were constantly undermined in a working environment dominated by white men.

在一次採訪中，鮑康如表示，對於婦女來說，在高科技產業工作就像被“凌遲處死”，因爲在這個由白人男性主導的工作環境中，婦女地位會被持續不斷地削弱。

Ms Pao, who is now the interim chief executive of Reddit, the online discussion forum, said there were only a “handful” of women success stories in Silicon Valley — such as Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook chief operating officer, and Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo.

鮑康如目前是在線論壇Reddit的代理首席執行官。她說，硅谷的女性成功案例“屈指可數”，其中包括Facebook首席運營官雪莉·桑德伯格(Sheryl Sandberg)和雅虎(Yahoo)首席執行官梅里莎•梅爾(Marissa Mayer)。