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It is telling that the highest-profile lawsuit of the moment in Silicon Valley isn’t about intellectual property or antitrust violations, but about sex discrimination. This week, a jury in San Francisco is hearing arguments in Ellen Pao’s suit against her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most prominent venture-capital firms in the tech industry. At the heart of the case is Pao’s claim that a married colleague at Kleiner Perkins pressured her into an affair and then, after she ended the relationship, retaliated by excluding her from meetings and email discussions, which affected her work performance.
目前硅谷最引人注目的官司不是侵犯知识产权，也不是触犯反托拉斯法，而是一桩性别歧视案，这很能说明问题。本周，旧金山一个陪审团听取了鲍康如(Ellen Pao)诉其前雇主凯鹏华盈(Kleiner Perkins)一案的陈词。凯鹏华盈是科技行业中最著名的风险投资公司之一。这桩案子的核心在于，鲍康如称凯鹏华盈的一名已婚同事向她施加压力，让她陷入婚外情，而当她结束这种关系后，对方为了报复她，不让她参加会议和电子邮件讨论，这影响了她的工作表现。
But Pao, who is now the interim chief executive of Reddit, has also painted a broader picture of Kleiner Perkins as a hostile bastion of male entitlement, where female partners were excluded from dinners with entrepreneurs because they would “kill the buzz.” Kleiner Perkins has responded that Pao received bad performance reviews and lacked the attributes for succeeding in venture capital — “the ability to lead others, build consensus and be a team player.” The firm also says it has long been a supporter of women in house and in the industry.
鲍康如现任Reddit临时首席执行官，在这宗诉讼中，她还做出了一种更广泛的描绘：凯鹏华盈是一家男性享有特权的公司，这里女性合伙人被排除在与企业家会面的晚宴之外，因为她们会“扫兴”。凯鹏华盈回应说，鲍康如得到了表现不佳的评价，她缺乏在风险投资业获得成功的素质——“领导别人，建立共识，开展团队合作。”该公司还表示，他们长期以来都对公司和行业中的女性予以支持。
The case has riveted the tech world, not just because of the personal particulars but also because of the way in which it captures the zeitgeist in one of the most powerful and gender-imbalanced corners of a powerful and gender-imbalanced industry. It’s no revelation at this point that the tech sector often isn’t an easy place to be a woman. For an article I recently wrote involving another high-profile lawsuit in Palo Alto, Calif. (over sexual harassment and assault), I talked to a dozen and a half women in the valley who are in their 20s and 30s, as well as a handful of men. As far as sex and gender were concerned, the work atmosphere they described sounded retrograde to a degree reminiscent of other glamorous industries in the growth spurt of adolescence: Hollywood in the 1950s, Wall Street in the 1980s.
此案吸引科技界的目光，不仅是因为它包含的个人细节，也因为它在一个最强大、性别最不平衡的一个行业中的一个最强大、性别最不平衡的角落捕捉了时代状态。在目前阶段，女性要待在科技界往往并不容易，这不是什么秘密。最近我为了写另一桩发生在加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托的（关于性骚扰和攻击的）备受瞩目的官司，和硅谷中将近20名二三十岁的女性以及一些男性交谈过。就性和性别而言，他们所描述的工作氛围，在一定程度上让人联想到另外两个令人艳羡的行业在蓬勃发展的青春期时的状况：20世纪50年代的好莱坞，和20世纪80年代的华尔街。
“You can’t take for granted you’ll be taken seriously,” one female start-up adviser who had worked at a major tech company told me. “That is different for men, 100 percent.” Many of the women spoke with a mix of frustration and dismay about the guys in computer-science class who were reluctant to code with them or the executives who weren’t sure they were right for a job or a promotion.
“你不能想当然地以为自己会被认真对待，”曾在大型科技公司工作过的一位女性告诉我，她现在是初创公司顾问。“情况对男性来说就不同了，100%不同。”很多女性无奈而沮丧地谈到了计算机科学课上男生谁不愿意与她们打交道，或高管不相信她们适合某个岗位或获得晋升。
What’s true of Silicon Valley is especially true at venture-capital firms. Studies suggest that women make up just 19 percent of angel investors and 6 percent of partners at venture capital firms (down from 10 percent in 1999). This has predictable consequences. The women I talked to had plenty of stories of male investors who didn’t want to fund them for reasons that were either comically antiquated or suspiciously hazy. (Rarely, one suspects, are the men as blunt as the investor who told Kathryn Tucker of RedRover, an app for kids’ events, that “I don’t like the way women think.” Even when the discrimination wasn’t so overt, women told me they encountered more subtle barriers. The male venture capitalists they worked with often seemed uncomfortable with women and tended to treat them less as peers than as potential conquests.
硅谷的这种状况，在风险投资公司尤其严重。研究表明，天使投资者中女性仅占19%，风险投资公司合伙人中女性仅占6%（1999年时还是10%）。这造成了可以预见的后果。和我交谈过的那些女性，提到了很多这样的经历：男性投资者不愿把资金投给她们，给出的理由不是陈腐得可笑，就是隐晦得可疑。（有个男性投资者告诉儿童活动应用RedRover的创始人凯瑟琳·塔克[Kathryn Tucker]：“我不喜欢女性的思路。”说话这么直截了当的男性应该很少。）这些女性告诉我，即使在歧视不是很明显的时候，她们也遇到了更难以言说的障碍。与她们共事的男性风投者和女性在一起时经常显得不自在，对待她们更像是潜在的征服对象，而不是同行。
Elissa Shevinksy, a co-founder of Glimpse Labs, emphasized that “the best V.C.s and angels are very professional.” Then she told me a story about a well-liked investor who brought up pornography, sex and reincarnation as she tried to pitch her company to him. “This was just part of the sea we swim in,” she said.
Glimpse Labs的联合创始人艾丽莎·舍温斯基(Elissa Shevinsky)强调说，“最好的风险投资人都非常专业。”然后她告诉我一件事：当她向一个名声很好的投资人推介自己的公司时，他提到了色情、性和转世。“我们所处的环境就是这样，”她说。
Shevinksy’s own “feminist breakout moment,” as she describes it, occurred in September 2013 at a hackathon hosted by TechCrunch, when a pair of programmers did a joke presentation for Titstare, “an app where you take photos of yourself staring at tits.” They closed with, “It’s the breast, most titillating fun you can’t have.” Loud applause followed from the audience of mostly male coders.
舍温斯基说，自己的“女权主义爆发时刻”发生在2013年9月，当时TechCrunch举办了一个黑客马拉松，有两个程序员做了一个玩笑式的演示，说要推出一个名为Titstare的应用，让你“拍下自己盯着奶子看的样子。”他们的结束语是，“这是乳房，你无法享有的乐趣中最撩人的一个。”观众中爆发出响亮的掌声，大多观众是男性程序员。
Shevinsky, watching on a live stream, was incensed enough to write a scathing post for Business Insider. For a dozen years as a developer, she had defended the tech status quo on social media. “I have to admit that I was wrong,” she wrote. “I wasn’t seeing the problems clearly because I’d been part of the industry for too long. . . . I wanted to just drink Scotch with my guy friends and build software. I’m done now.” She has decided to write a book about women in tech because “women are finally speaking up, and I want to be a part of it.”
当时正在看直播视频的舍温斯基被激怒了，随后写了一篇措辞严厉的帖子发在“商业内幕”(Business Insider)上。作为开发者，十几年来她一直在社交媒体上为科技业的现状做辩护。“我不得不承认，我错了，”她写道。“我没有看清问题，因为我在这个行业待的时间太久了……我只想和男性友人喝喝威士忌，做做软件。现在我不会这样了。”她决定写一本书，以科技界中的女性为主题，因为“女人终于站出来说话了，我想成为其中一份子”。
Not surprising, there is a considerable risk in publicly naming perceived harassers. Opportunity in Silicon Valley, which prides itself on informality and a lack of concern with credentials, is unusually relationship-dependent. (It is start-up gospel that human-resources manager is the last position you fill.) Women jockeying for a job, or for funding, often “don’t want to jeopardize that by calling someone out,” Kathryn Minshew, the founder of the Muse, a career and job-search platform, told me. They worry that they will be perceived as breaking the unwritten rules — or as just not worth the trouble to work with. “Even if no one ever says anything publicly, there’s so much talk over drinks,” said Kat Li, who has worked on product and business development at several start-ups. “And you would never know.”
可以想象，把自己认为的骚扰者指名道姓说出来，是有相当大风险的。在自诩拥有轻松气氛、不那么在乎资历的硅谷，机遇与人际关系是息息相关的。（初创公司的信条是，人力资源经理是最后一个招的职位。）求职平台Muse的创始人凯瑟琳·明斯(Kathryn Minshew)告诉我，在设法获得工作或资金的女性通常“不想把这些明着说出来，免得殃及自己。”她们担心，人们会认为她们打破了那些不成文的规定，或着觉得与她们共事会很麻烦。“即便没人公开说过什么，但喝酒的时候话会变多，”卡特·李（Kat Li，音）。“而你永远都不会知道。”凯特·李曾供职于几家初创公司，主要负责产品和商业开发。
Some of this may be slowly changing. Li and eight other women posted a kind of manifesto for women in tech last spring that emphasized the value of speaking out about sexist jokes and incidents. Gesche Haas, an entrepreneur based in New York, did just that last summer after an encounter with a Czech angel investor named Pavel Curda at an industry event in Germany. After the meeting, Haas received an email from him reading: “Hey G. I will not leave Berlin without having sex with you. Deal?”
其中一些情况可能在慢慢改变。凯特·李和另外八名女性在去年春天为科技行业的女性发布了一份宣言，强调说出听到的带有性别歧视的笑话及遇到的性别歧视事件的重要性。纽约的创业者格舍·哈斯(Gesche Haas)在去年夏天就说出了自己的遭遇，她在德国参加业内活动时遇到了捷克的天使投资者帕维尔·可达(Pavel Curda)。会议结束后，哈斯收到了可达发来的邮件，邮件写道，“嘿，G，不把你上了我是不会离开柏林的。成交吗？”
After learning that Curda had sent the same email to another woman at the conference, Haas posted his note online with his name rubbed out. A writer from Valleywag got in touch, saying he knew who wrote the email and wanted to include Haas’s name in an article. She agreed, though she was “petrified,” she told me recently. But she got a lot of support, she said — and Curda was dumped by three start-up accelerators (organizations that provide mentorship in exchange for equity), where he was helping to guide entrepreneurs. Curda apologized publicly to Haas, saying “I made a big mistake, and I regret it.”
在得知可达给另一名参加会议的女性发送了同样的邮件后，哈斯在网上公布了这封邮件，但抹掉了他的名字。博客网站Valleywag的一名博客作者和她取得联系，称他知道是谁发出的邮件，并想在一篇文章中提到哈斯的名字。哈斯最近告诉我，她同意了，尽管她“惊恐万分”。但她表示，自己获得了很多支持，可达被三家创业加速器（通过提供指导获取股票的机构）解雇，他曾在这些机构供职，为创业者提供指导。可达公开向哈斯道歉，称“我犯了一个大错，我很后悔”。
At a few well-known tech companies over the last two years, male executives have departed after highly publicized sexual-harassment accusations. Keith Rabois left Square in 2013 after a relationship with a male employee led to harassment allegations. (Rabois said the relationship was consensual and defended himself in court.) GitHub founder Tom Preston-Warner resigned from the social coding site in April 2014 after a female developer said an engineer there hijacked her work after she refused to sleep with him. (The company found that Preston-Warner hadn’t committed legal wrongdoing but said he had made “mistakes and errors of judgment.”) Justin Mateen exited the dating app Tinder in July 2014 after a female co-founder provided texts in which he threatened her after she broke up with him. (The company condemned the messages but called the woman’s allegations against Tinder and its management “unfounded.”)
在过去两年中，一些知名科技公司的男性高管遭到性骚扰指控后引发热议，随后选择离职。2013年，基斯·拉布瓦(Keith Rabois)在与一名男性员工发展关系后遭到性骚扰指控，因此从Square离职。（拉布瓦表示，这是一段两厢情愿的关系，在法庭上为自己做了辩护。）GitHub创始人汤姆·普雷斯顿-瓦尔纳(Tom Preston-Warner)于2014年4月离开了这家社交编程网站，此前，一名女性开发人员称，一名工程师在她拒绝与之上床之后抢走了她的工作。（该公司发现，普雷斯顿-瓦尔纳不存在违法行为，但称他“犯了错，做出了错误的判断”。）贾斯廷·马丁(Justin Mateen)于2014年7月退出了约会应用Tinder，因为一名女性联合创始人提供的短信显示，马丁在两人分手后对她进行威胁。（该公司谴责了这些短信，但称这名女性对马丁及管理层的指控“毫无根据”。）
Regardless of who — if anyone — is ultimately found to be at fault, Pao’s lawsuit suggests the singular role that venture capitalists could play in pushing, or thwarting, a cultural shift. As the kingmakers who decide which start-ups survive, they have the leverage to make the industry more receptive to women and their ideas or continue to reinforce the “brogrammer” norm. It’s more meaningful — if riskier — to hold venture capitalists accountable for sexism than to denounce young guys who act like jerks, à la Titstare. And what about the major public figures among the firms’ backers? Kleiner Perkins’s investors include Stanford’s endowment board and its university president, John Hennessy. Al Gore is a partner, and Colin Powell is a “strategic adviser.”
不管最后发现错误在谁——如果能确定的话，鲍康如的案件都显示了风投者在推进或阻碍文化转变方面发挥的重要作用。作为决定初创公司存亡命运的关键人物，他们具有影响力，可以促使这个行业更愿意接受女性和她们的想法，或继续强化“爷们程序员”(brogrammer)的规范。与其去谴责Titstare那种犯浑的年轻人，让风投者为性别歧视负责更具意义——风险也更大。这些公司的资助者包括一些主要的公众人物，他们怎么样呢？凯鹏华盈的投资者包括斯坦福大学(Stanford)的捐赠管理委员会和该校校长约翰·亨尼斯(John Hennessy)。阿尔·戈尔(Al Gore)是其合伙人，科林·鲍威尔(Colin Powell)是该公司的“战略顾问”。
Young women preparing for careers in Silicon Valley are watching the signals that the venture capitalists send. Sierra Kaplan-Nelson, a computer-science major I met at Stanford, brought up the soaring trajectory of Evan Spiegel, the founder of the messaging service Snapchat, who as a Stanford student himself in 2009 wrote a stream of “sleazy frat emails,” as Valleywag put it in publishing them. (“Did I just pee on Lily while assuming the big spoon position?” reads one of the few that is quotable here. “Uhoh. Maybe I can blame this on her.”) Spiegel quickly apologized for the messages — and that, apparently, was that. In August, Snapchat became “one of the world’s most valuable private tech start-ups,” according to Forbes, worth $10 billion, after a successful round of fund-raising — led by none other than Kleiner Perkins, which put in $20 million.
为进入硅谷而做准备的年轻女性正在关注风投者发出的信号。我在斯坦福大学结识了计算机科学专业的学生西拉·卡普兰-内尔松(Sierra Kaplan-Nelson)，她提起信息服务公司Snapchat创始人埃文·斯皮格尔(Evan Spiegel)平步青云的事业轨迹，2009年，还在斯坦福大学读书的斯皮格尔写了一些邮件，Valleywag公布这些邮件时称它们是些“哥们间的低俗邮件”。（可堪引用的内容不多，其中有一封说“我是不是从背后上的时候尿莉莉身上了？”“啊噢。说不定可以赖到她头上。”）斯皮格尔迅速对这些信息表示了道歉——而此事显然也就到此为止了。8月，根据福布斯(Forbes)提供的信息，Snapchat已经成了“世界上价值最高的私营科技初创企业之一”，其市值为100亿美元（约合620亿元人民币）。公司之前进行了一轮成功的融资——正是由投了2000万美元的凯鹏华盈领导。
“Did the value of Snapchat go down since those emails went out?” Kaplan-Nelson asked when I had lunch with her. “Not at all. The venture-capital world is looking for guys like Evan Spiegel.”
“这些电子邮件的内容公布后，Snapchat的市值降低了吗？”卡普兰-尼尔森(Kaplan-Nelson)在与我共进午餐时问道。“根本没有。风险投资的世界正在寻找像埃文·斯皮格尔这样的家伙。”
