One year on, Google still a white male-dominated company – report

2 Jun 2015

Just over a year after it published its first diversity report on its workforce, Google’s second report for 2015 shows almost no change, with white males still accounting for 60pc of the company’s entire workforce.

Issued at the end of May 2014, the first report showed that, across its 56,000 staff around the world in both tech and non-tech roles, males made up 70pc of the numbers and, now, a year on, the percentage remains the same.

Where changes have occurred, however, the percentage difference is no more than 1pc, with the percentage of women in tech increasing to 18pc, while women in leadership positions have been nudged closer to 22pc in 2015 compared with 21pc in 2014.

Releasing its report last year with the title Getting to work on diversity at Google, the company admitted that it was “reluctant to publish the numbers” at the time but had promised to work on its obvious lack of diversity, not just in terms of gender, but race also.

Google diversity report total

Image via Google

 

This year’s figures for racial diversity, based in its US operations alone, again show a difference of just 1pc, with the number of white males reducing to 60pc, while people of Asian origin increase by one to 31pc.

Other races who were represented in the report show the obvious divide that still exists in the tech giant with black (2pc) and Hispanic (3pc) peoples across the company being hugely overshadowed in the figures by people of white or Asian origin.

In tech, these figures drop to 1pc and 2pc respectively.

Google diversity report tech

Image via Google

Change impossible to achieve in one year, Google says

Speaking to USA Today, Google’s VP of people operations, Nancy Lee, said that, despite the apparent lack of change, there were “positive trends” to take from the latest report: “I think we are getting better and we are hoping that ultimately we are able to accelerate the improvement.”

Lee went on to defend the statistics, saying that to make a substantial change in one year was almost impossible.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest proponents of greater diversity in Silicon Valley, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, has responded to the report, saying that, despite its openness, Google needs to do much more to bridge the divide.

“I’ll give Google an ‘A’ for transparency and attitude. But they must be bold enough to set goals, targets and timetables to include those who have never been given the chance,” he said.

Google diversity report leadership

Image via Google

Inspirefest 2015 is Silicon Republic’s international event running 18-20 June in Dublin that connects sci-tech professionals passionate about the future of STEM with fresh perspectives on leadership, innovation and diversity.

Google’s Mountain View office image via Shutterstock

 

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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