Ellen Pao hopes her case will help tackle Silicon Valley sexism

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

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".

"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.

"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.

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 like medicine and law.

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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.

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