Sex discrimination suit set to start in Silicon Valley

There’s a civil suit set to go to trial this week. Ellen Pao, a former employee at Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is suing the company, saying  she was discriminated against. The case is drawing attention to an industry where women are still struggling. 

“It’s a boys’ club,” says Susan Duffy, executive director at the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership at Babson College.

A decade ago, 10 percent of venture capital decision-makers were women, according to a study published by Babson last fall. “And now in the United States only 8.6 percent of those decision-makers are women, and globally only 6 percent, so we’re actually going in the wrong direction,” Duffy says.