Following other top tech companies, social network Facebook has publicly released stats on its workforce demographics for the first time, revealing underrepresentation of Hispanic and black people, and a severe gender gap.
Currently, all of Facebook worldwide is made up of 69pc male and 31pc female staff. However, whittling those numbers down to just the tech jobs shows 85pc male employees to 15pc females, while non-tech roles are much more balanced, with 53pc males and 47pc females. Looking at senior positions, there is a clear gender gap, with 77pc of these roles going to men.
In terms of ethnicity, Facebook’s global team is 57pc white, 34pc Asian, 4pc Hispanic, 3pc multiracial and 2pc black. Tech roles are largely split between white (53pc) and Asian (41pc) employees, while Hispanic, multiracial and black team members remain below double digits across the board.
Despite white and Asian employees making up the vast majority of Facebook’s staff, senior-level appointments are 74pc white to just 19pc Asian.
Facebook admits these figures show a lot more work needs to be done. A pattern is emerging among tech companies that have released these reports – a diversity issue that many were already aware of, but now have the figures to back it up.
Facebook launched a strategic diversity team last year to tackle this issue and claims it has already seen an improvement in new hires and lower attrition rates for underrepresented groups.
Other initiatives undertaken to improve diversity at the company include targeting undergraduates from minory groups for internships, providing unconscious bias training for employees, and establishing partnerships with the National Center for Women & Information Technology, Girls Who Code, the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and others.
