UPDATED on 9/21/2015 at 5:00 PM: Although Twitter’s statistic for black women on staff renders as 0% according to the Verge’s metrics, there are 14 black women on staff at the company.
Those of us familiar with the lack of diversity in the tech industry may not be surprised to hear that Twitter has 0% black women employees (the number of black employees in total amounts to 2%).
The demographic statistics for other major tech companies surveyed (e.g. Google, Facebook) lack parity across the board, but out of all the companies surveyed, Twitter was the company with the lowest percentage of black women on staff. This is particularly depressing given the audience demographics for Twitter users, the majority of whom are black (via Pew):
Black people also represent a majority of users on Instagram, although Instagram’s staffing percentages were not featured in the Verge’s demographics survey. Amazon has the most black women on staff out of all the companies surveyed by the Verge, but at only 7% (with 15% black employees total), the numbers don’t look great.
What’s also unclear from these statistics is which jobs are predominantly held by each demographic; for example, Apple recently came under fire for publishing diversity numbers that seemed indicate an increase in women employees, but the changes were in retail store hiring, not in high-level leadership. When we factor in the lack of diversity in leadership and CEO positions, these numbers become even more of an indication of how much further the tech industry has left to go.
(via Jezebel)
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