Silicon Valley apparently is a white man's world. And for Facebook, new demographics show that white males are dominating that work force. The results aren't surprising, as most analysts and observers have noted that Silicon Valley continues to be a stable home for white and Asian men first, where both are the ethnic majorities in the Bay Area.
But it is the first time that Facebook has publicly discussed its demographics, having previously refused to publish those statistics and fought against diversity figures becoming public knowledge. The numbers are from Facebook's own published report.
"As these numbers show, we have more work to do -- a lot more," Maxine Williams, Facebook's global head of diversity, said in a statement.
Globally, it is even worse for Facebook, where men dominate its labor pool, the numbers reveal. Facebook's global figures show men make up 69 percent of its workforce, Regarding ethnicity, Facebook's global figures show 57 percent are white, 34 percent are Asian, 4 percent are Hispanic, 3 percent are two-plus races, and 2 percent are black.
Among the company's tech workers, 85 percent are male, while more than three-fourths of its management staff are men, highlighting the difficulty of entering the tech world as a woman, even as the number of female tech graduates continues to increase.
Amid widespread criticism, Silicon Valley companies appear to be changing their tune over diversity and have pushed, at least somewhat, to discuss the issues, highlighting their large percentage of Asian workers, even as Asians and whites account for approximately equal numbers in the Bay Area.
In 2011, when CNN Money attempted to detail the diversity among Silicon Valley companies, among them Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Google, IBM and Microsoft, there was massive resistance and petitions filed with the Department of Labor in order to avoid having their diversity demographics made public knowledge.
But now, three years on, as the tech world continues to face criticism over its role in daily life, gentrification issues and the gender gap, it appears companies like Google and now Facebook are hopeful that by bringing the conversation forward, it will help create conditions that officials believe will result in other groups entering the tech workforce.
Still, Facebook, as evidenced by the numbers, remains a largely male-dominated workplace, populated by white and Asian men. The question is how to make it a place to work that is open and welcoming to women as well as men of color.
