Facebook diversity report: “We have more work to do”

Facebook has released the results of its first diversity study, and the results are … not shocking.

Measuring employee diversity in terms of gender and ethnicity, Facebook’s results appear typical of American technology companies today. Globally, males dominate at 69 percent of employees overall, and in the US, white males dominate at 57 percent, followed by 34 percent Asians. No other ethnic group came close.

Facebook’s Maxine Williams, global head of diversity, wrote in the company blog, “As these numbers show, we have more work to do–a lot more. But the good news is that we’ve begun to make progress.”

In Facebook’s tech divisions, the ratio of males is overwhelming at 85 percent, and the vast majority of those are either White or Asian. Gender more or less evened out in the non-tech sector, at 53 percent male and 47 percent female, however, whites continued to predominate even in the non-tech sphere at 63 percent.

Facebook’s results mirror other tech companies reporting diversity stats recently. At Google, the match was one percentage off, as that company reported 70 percent of its global workforce is male, with white and Asian employees filling positions at 61 and 30 percent respectively. Yahoo too, recently revealed that 70 percent of its workforce is male and that 90 percent of US employees are either White or Asian.

Facebook says it is deploying a number of strategies designed to balance its workplace, including partnering with “pipeline” programs such as Girls Who Code, Code 2040, National Society of Black Engineers, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and Management Leadership for Tomorrow as well as the Anita Borg Institute and the National Center for Women & Information Technology. It also is pursuing several in-house initiatives.

➤ Facebook

Featured Image Credit – Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images