Content area
Full text
Since the 1970s, antidiscrimination advocates have approached Title VII as though the impact of the law on minorities and women could be considered in isolation. This Article argues that this is a mistake. Instead, Gender and the Tournament attempts to reclaim Title VII's original approach, which justified efforts to dismantle segregated workplaces as necessary to both eliminate discrimination and promote economic growth. Using that approach, this Article is the first to consider how widespread corporate tournaments and growing gender disparities in the upper echelons of the economy are intrinsically intertwined, and how they undermine the core promises of antidiscrimination law. The Article draws on a case filed in 2014 challenging the "rank-and-yank" evaluation system at Microsoft, as well as social science literature regarding narcissism and stereotype expectations, to illustrate how consideration of the legitimacy of competitive pay for performance schemes is essential to combating the intrinsically gendered nature of advancement in the new economy.
Introduction
Ellen Pao galvanized attention to the plight of women in the financial world by suing Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley's storied venture capital firm, for sex discrimination. Only 6% of venture capital partners are women,1 and Perkins enticed Pao to the firm with promises of advancement. Yet, after seven years in her job, she found the promises hollow. She alleged that men were promoted ahead of women, that the firm embraced men's business promotion more readily than women's, and that it provided little support for women who experienced sexual harassment, a not uncommon occurrence in the financial world. Pao charged that Kleiner Perkins was a "boys' club," with gender-coded evaluations and different standards of advancement for men and women.2 While the firm claimed to prize initiative and drive, Pao's performance reviews dinged her for being "sharp elbowed,"3 a trait rarely criticized among the men. Following a five-week trial in 2015, she lost.4
In September 2014, Katherine Moussouris and two other women filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft.5 They claimed that Microsoft's "stack ranking" system, which graded technical and engineering employees on a forced curve, discriminated against women. The system identifies a top group in line to receive bigger bonuses and promotion opportunities, a middle group of adequate employees, and a bottom group that the company encouraged to leave. The...