Facebook has released its diversity report and the demographic breakdown reveals that the company is primarily steered by white and Asian males.
The company released its diversity report on Wednesday, June, 25; close on the heels of reports from Google, LinkedIn and Yahoo. The gender and ethnic diversity of Facebook employees is similar to that of other Silicon Valley companies, with men dominating the ranks.
Initially, Facebook was not keen on disclosing its diversity data and had let on that it wanted to deliberate the data with its employees first. However, with the release of Google's diversity report earlier in May this year, Facebook came under pressure to follow suit.
Based on the diversity figures released by Facebook, only 31 percent of its 6,500 global workforce is composed of women. The ratio of men and women is even more skewed at 85:15 when it comes to tech employees worldwide. The nontech ratio of men and women fares better at 53 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
The company has disclosed ethnicity figures as well, but only for U.S. employees. According to this data, 57 percent of the employees are white, 34 percent are Asian, 4 percent are Hispanic, 3 percent are Two+ races and only 2 percent are black.
The senior level management is also male-dominated, with an overwhelming 77 percent of the global workforce being men.
"As these numbers show, we have more work to do -- a lot more," says Maxine Williams, Facebook's global head of diversity in a blog post. "Diversity is something that we're treating as everyone's responsibility at Facebook, and the challenge of finding qualified but underrepresented candidates is one that we're addressing as part of a strategic effort across Facebook. Since our strategic diversity team launched last year, we're already seeing improved new hire figures and lower attrition rates for underrepresented groups."
Facebook also revealed that it is in the process of executing several "programs" and "strategies" that will enable the company to increase talent from communities that are underrepresented right now.
Even though Facebook has released its diversity data, the company has desisted from making public its EEO-1 report that will give an in-depth insight into the composition of its workforce in the United States. This report is required to be filed ever year with the U.S. government.
