Gender equity: Dr Colleen Crangle's story

“So, has everybody lied?” asked the attorney. He was addressing the jury in the closing arguments of the sex-discrimination case Colleen Crangle had brought against Stanford University from SMI [Stanford Medical Informatics] in a Federal Court in San Jose, CA. “If you accept Dr Crangle's statement of the facts,” he continued, “you have to assume that everybody who got on the stand lied to you, lied to you under oath.” The next day, after only hours of deliberation, the jurors found unanimously in Colleen's favour on all matters put before them. They awarded the maximum allowed under federal law for punitive and compensatory damages, finding that she had made a good-faith claim of sex discrimination and that, in response, her employers had retaliated against her, acting with malice, or a reckless disregard to her protected rights.