Women lead minority groups with 30%
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| Google employees work on their laptops at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. In a groundbreaking disclosure, Google on Wednesday revealed how very white and male its workforce is — just 2 percent of its Googlers are black, 3 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are women. / AP file photo |
SAN JOSE, CALIF. — In a groundbreaking disclosure, Google revealed Wednesday how
very white and male its work force is — just 2 percent of its Google employees
are black, 3 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are women. About a third of
the company’s work force is Asian.
The
search giant said the transparency about its work force is an important step
toward change.
“Simply
put, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity,” Google Inc.
senior vice president Laszlo Bock wrote in a blog.
The numbers were compiled as part of a report that major U.S.
employers must file with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Companies
are not required to make the information public.
The
gender divide is based on the roughly 44,000 people Google employed throughout
the world at the start of this year. The company didn’t factor about 4,000
workers at its Motorola Mobility division, which is being sold to China’s
Lenovo Group for $2.9 billion. The racial data is limited to Google’s roughly
26,600 workers in the U.S as of August 2013.
Facebook
chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg recently said the social networking
company is headed toward disclosure as well, but it was important to share the
data internally first.
Apple
Inc., Twitter and Microsoft Corp. did not respond immediately to queries about
possible plans to disclose data.
Hewlett-Packard
spokesman Michael Thacker said the firm, with 331,800 worldwide employees, has
been publishing this data going back to 2001 as part of a Global Citizenship
Report. In their most recent report, almost 7 percent of their U.S. work force
was black, 6 percent Hispanic and 33 percent were women.
Bock
said Google has been working to diversify, not just its offices but in the
broader tech sector. Since 2010, the firm has given more than $40 million to
organizations working to bring computer science education to women and girls,
he said.
The
company also is working with historically black colleges and universities to
elevate coursework and attendance in computer science, he said.
“But
we’re the first to admit that Google is miles from where we want to be, and
that being totally clear about the extent of the problem is a really important
part of the solution,” he said.
Gender
and ethnic disparities are reflected throughout the tech industry. About 7
percent of tech workers are black or Latino in Silicon Valley and nationally.
Blacks and Hispanics make up 13.1 and 16.9 percent of the U.S. population,
respectively, according to the most recent Census data.
In
the coming months, Google said, it will work with the Kapor Center for Social
Impact, a group that uses information technology to close gender and ethnic
gaps in the Silicon Valley work force. The center will be organizing a
Google-backed conference in California focusing on issues of technology and
diversity.
Co-founder
Freada Kapor Klein, who started the Level Playing Field Institute 13 years ago
to teach and mentor black and Latino students in science and math, said Google
is showing leadership “which has been sorely needed for a long time.”
“Google
is the company known for the moonshot, and applying that part of Google DNA to
this problem is a breath of fresh air,” she said.
Earlier
this year, the Rev. Jesse Jackson launched a campaign to diversify Silicon
Valley, asking to meet with leaders of several iconic technology companies
about bringing black and Hispanics into their work force and leadership.
Since
then, he’s been leading delegations to annual shareholder’s meetings at firms
including Google, Facebook, eBay Inc. and Hewlett-Packard.
On
Wednesday Jackson said Google is to be commended.
“It’s
a bold step in the right direction. We urge other companies to follow Google’s
lead,” he said. “Silicon Valley and the tech industry have demonstrated an
ability to solve the most challenging and complex problems in the world.
Inclusion is a complex problem — if we put our collective minds together, we
can solve that too.”
Iris
Gardner, a manager at nonprofit Code2040, which places high performing black
and Latino software engineering students in internships with top tech
companies, said Google’s disclosure could mark a pivotal moment in the push to
diversify Silicon Valley.
“It
is a big deal for them to be transparent about something that most companies
haven’t in the past been willing to share,” she said.
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