After Pao's loss, will male-dominated Silicon Valley change its ways?

[Commentary] A jury found that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the nation's most prominent venture capital firms, didn't discriminate against one its employees, Ellen Pao, and didn't fire her in retaliation for her protesting her treatment. The decision has left a number of uncertainties. Will male-dominated Silicon Valley change its ways? Not anytime soon, some fear.

“The outcome of the trial sends a message that women simply have to accommodate to such disappointing cultures,” said Bernice Ledbetter of the practitioner faculty of organizational theory and management at Pepperdine University. But in the weeks leading up to the hearing of the case, some venture capitalists said the lawsuit put them on notice and that they were stepping up efforts to find ways to promote women. Only about 5% of decision-makers at venture-capital firms now are female, according to research firm PitchBook. Chris Sacca, an angel investor in Uber and Instagram, said on Twitter Friday that the conversation about technology’s “deep gender discrimination problem” shouldn’t end with Pao’s loss. Meantime, Google, Facebook, Intel and other big tech companies have acknowledged the low representation of women and minorities in engineering roles and are implementing programs that they hope will improve their records.