Google is continuing to struggle with diversity as new report shows just 18% of tech jobs go to women, while black and hispanic workers make up just five per cent of their US workforce.
The technology company revealed the figures in its updated demographic breakdown on Monday, with little progress in the recruitment of women and minorities being shown.
This new report comes a year on from the public release of the gender and racial makeup of Google’s payroll, which displayed a clear diversity problem within the company, and across the technology sector.
Google’s 2015 breakdown has shown only a small improvement towards a diverse workforce, despite the company reportedly investing $150million into increasing the recruitment of women and minorities.
Alongside other tech firms in the industry, Google has directly invested into programs that specifically target women, black people and Hispanics to direct them into the technology industry.
Companies have also worked to focus women and minorities on mathematics and science in schools, as well as increasing their recruitment level of minority graduates.
However, Google’s latest breakdown has revealed that of the 53,600 people employed at the end of 2014, just two per cent were black people and three per cent were Hispanic in the U.S.
A sheer comparison when compared to the 59% of Google tech jobs occupied by white people, and 35% filled by Asian people.
Also shown was that of Google’s technology jobs worldwide, just 18% were held by women; just one per cent up from 2014, despite hiring women into one in every five of the company’s high-paying technology jobs last year.
Nancy Lee, Vice-President of People Operations at Google, remarks: “Early indications show promise but we know that with an organisation our size, year-on-year growth and meaningful change is going to take time.”
Conversely, although the new breakdown shows little improvement, Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader and activist for diversity in the tech industry, has commended Google for the release of its workforce data as well as for setting an example within the technology sector, and for putting pressure on other firms to diversify their recruitment:
Jackson commented that: “Tech companies must move from the aspiration of ‘doing better’ to concrete actionable hiring to move the needle. We aim to change the flow of the river.”
Anonymous@ Anonymous
Bob
I suppose if it impacts the service delivered to the customer, it's worth trying to improve but I'd love to see the argument that a female customer will only buy from a female producer or that a minority will perform a specific job role better or worse than anyone else... It seems a pointless tick box exercise so they can say ‘look at us! Aren’t we enlightened to work in a place with women and minorities!’ – daft.
On a related note - "positive discrimination" is still discrimination & inevitably leads to resentment and an "us" and "them" mentality. Social categorization leads to social identity which leads to prejudiced views.
Total cost of sponsoring an African village of 300 for one year would be about $136,400. They could have spent that £150M keeping 300,000 people alive for a year…
Kyle Lyles
And it can't be brushed off as "new technologies", it's a culture of paying the lowest wages possible.
Jimmy Jones
anonymous@ Anonymous