Facebook Releases Annual Diversity Report, Vows Improvement In Racial Representation

Another major player in the tech world released an annual diversity report and, unsurprisingly, the numbers show that there is still work to do. Facebook released its diversity statistics in a Thursday blog post authored by Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams.

While there has been an improvement on several fronts, Williams conceded in the post that there are still plenty of ways Facebook can improve in terms of inclusiveness.

When it comes to hiring more women, Facebook appears to be on the right track, according to its own company data. The total percentage of women in the company rose from 31 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018. More women are working at Facebook in technical, business and leadership roles than ever before.

Things get less encouraging when it comes to race. Black employees make up four percent of Facebook, while latinx employees come in at five percent. Those are up slightly from previous years, but are still noticeably low overall. The company saw no growth in the number of black and latinx employees in technical and senior leadership roles; latinx company leaders actually dropped from four percent to three since the last report.

Williams acknowledged to CNBC that Facebook’s history as a Harvard dorm room startup plays into the company’s lack of employee diversity. Unpaid internships and Ivy League institutions naturally favor privileged youth, meaning people of color can be left behind when it comes to Silicon Valley recruitment campaigns.

That means Facebook and its other tech cohorts will have to work proactively to increase representation among their ranks instead of just waiting for it to happen naturally. Williams mentioned in the blog post that Facebook will design coding courses for historically black colleges in the United States, as an example of what the company could do better.

Last, but definitely not least, Williams did mention that Facebook’s percentage of LGBTQ employees rose for the third year in a row. It now sits at eight percent.

Google and Twitter both released diversity reports earlier this year that are similar to Facebook’s in both concept and substance. All three companies reported low representation for black and latinx employees. A 2017 study found that stereotyping and discrimination drove minority employees away from tech companies.