By Rebekah Mintzer, Corporate Counsel

Ellen Pao may have lost her gender discrimination case against famed venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, but she did succeed in triggering a national conversation about women’s treatment in the workplace, especially in the technology sector. New life was breathed into that conversation on Monday, when a group of Silicon Valley bigwigs released a survey that backs up Pao’s allegations of sexism in the tech sector. Employment lawyers say that companies need to be taking firm stands against the sort of discrimination highlighted in the report.

The report, “Elephant in the Valley,” is based on interviews with women in leadership roles at startups, venture capital firms and large tech companies in the Bay Area. Almost 90 percent of the respondents said they’d had clients and colleagues address questions to male peers that should have been addressed to them and 47 percent said they’d been asked to do lower level tasks that male colleagues were not asked to do.

Another striking data point from the survey was that 60 percent of women had experienced unwanted sexual advances from someone at work over the course of their careers. In half of these cases, the unwanted advances happened more than once, and 65 percent of the time, they came from a superior.

The report’s authors include two titans of the venture capital scene in Silicon Valley, Trae Vassallo and Ellen Levy. Vassallo is a former Kleiner Perkins partner and testified at Pao’s trial that she had also experienced sexual harassment at the firm. She continues to serve as an adviser to the firm.

The data is disheartening, but employment law experts say there are steps in-house counsel can take, no matter what industry they work in, to reduce the risk of harassment and discrimination at their companies.

Companies can take a stand against this type of behavior through clear messaging, starting with policies and training. Anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies are a legal necessity to help companies both discourage potential harassers and discriminators and protect themselves from claims.

Then there’s the ever-important issue of training employees about what behaviors aren’t tolerated at work. “When I say ‘training’ it can sound boring or futile,” says Megan Winter, a partner at Fisher & Phillips. “But what I’m really talking about is a good, live training on anti-harassment and anti-discrimination management practices.” Winter recommends inviting members of the C-Suite or upper-level management to training sessions to get across just how important it is to the whole organization.

Although some companies opt for internal training, a third-party trainer has plenty of advantages. “I think for better or for worse people might be more likely to tune out their own HR rep, as opposed to having a third party come in,” says Winter.

Policies and training are essential, but if people are discouraged from speaking out about harassment and discrimination when they happen, these strategies may not be very useful. Plenty of the women surveyed didn’t seem to have much faith in the way harassment claims would be handled if they opted to speak out. Some 60 percent were dissatisfied with the course of action after they reported an incident. Many of the women who had been harassed that chose not to report—39 percent—believed that by speaking up they would have impacted their career negatively.

Barry Hartstein, a partner at Littler Mendelson, says that companies need to have strong procedures to address complaints and use good tone from the top to articulate that allegations will be taken seriously. But he acknowledges that it can be tough to make people feel comfortable about reporting harassment. “The question from my vantage point is, how can employers let employees know: ‘we take this seriously, we want you to come forward,’” he says. “I guess only though success stories can that be proven.”

The survey also asked about how women’s family lives were viewed at work. Some 75 percent of respondents said that they were asked about their family life, marital status and children in interviews. In some states, that’s actually illegal, as they incorporate marital status as a protected category. But even in states where these rules aren’t on the books, experts say that bringing up these topics is a definite danger, as they can easily give the impression that gender is being used as a factor in hiring.

Sometimes though, when interviews turn to more casual small talk, details about family life may come up accidentally, something Hartstein says both the interviewer and the job applicant need to be careful of. “It may very well be the type of information that’s volunteered,” says Hartstein. “So I do think it’s a two-way street.”

There are still flagrant instances of gender-based discrimination in the workplace. But as employers have become more sophisticated and cautious in the way they think about protected characteristics, the way gender bias presents itself may not be so readily apparent.

Hartstein says that unconscious bias is a big topic for equal employment opportunity lawyers, and the plaintiffs bar is well aware of how unconscious biases can be used to build a discrimination case. When companies talk about diversity, they are increasingly making people aware of the hidden biases they might not even be fully aware of. “I think part of diversity training could and very well should address that issue,” says Hartstein. “So people think about it.”

IMAGE: Ellen Pao Jason Doiy / The Recorder

For more on this story go to: http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=1202746918684/Survey-of-Women-Finds-Rampant-Sexism-in-Tech-Can-It-Be-Fixed#ixzz3x91SuKvR