The Georgetown Law Faculty blog weighs in. Key quote:
“The HP dispute should be viewed in light of the following research findings about the progress of women, including women of color, in roles of corporate leadership.”
Why? Why can we not simply look at the facts of the case? People in company allegedly commit crime. People in company get fired. It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman, a man, or a squirrel. If you mess up this bad, you get fired.
But I guess that’s too boring for some people. They have to create a new, more exciting story. Surely this must have something to do with gender bias!:
“Was the male accused of leaking playing a male ‘gender card’ by taking corporate confidences public to bring down a woman executive with whom he was engaged in a corporate power struggle that would have ended quietly, but no less bitterly, had she been a man?”
The H-P case is an interested story and one that should get a lot of coverage. But the story should be a lesson: a case study in corporate ethics, not outlandish gender-bias conspiracy theories.