Last year, Trae Vassallo took the stand during Ellen Pao’s discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins, testifying vividly about her experience being sexually harassed by a former partner at the VC firm. Afterwards, she says an “overwhelming number” of women approached her to share their own stories of harassment. Despite having been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual advances, Vassallo was surprised at how prevalent the issue seemed to be—and says that most men she talked to seemed shocked to hear it was happening at all.
Now, she and co-author Michele Madansky want to help the world understand just how big a struggle women face in the tech industry with a new survey, aptly titled “The Elephant in the Valley.”
Appearing on Kara Swisher’s “Re/code Decode” podcast, Vassallo, a former general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers who is now an independent investor and advisor, and Madansky, a research consultant who spent four years at Yahoo YHOO 1.72% , talked about why they wanted to quantify the problem. The goal? To stamp the prevalence of sexism “into the conscience of everyone in Silicon Valley,” said Madansky.
[For more of this story, written by Kristen Bellstrom, go to http://fortune.com/2016/01/11/...ual-harassment-tech/]
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