Report Reveals Facebook Is Still Lacking In Staff Diversity

Facebook released it’s workforce diversity stats on Thursday, which showed that the company is not very diverse at all. According to the report, Facebook’s staff is still 68 percent male and 55 percent White. Despite Facebook continuing to hire white males over others, the company suggests that diversity is high up on there list of goals. Recently, Facebook’s global head of diversity, Maxine Williams made a statement on FB’s lack of diversity progress.

“It’s clear to all of us that we still aren’t where we want to be. There’s more work to do.”

The issue with Facebook’s diversity spokeswoman is that she seems to be repeating herself each time a new report is released. Last year, when FB’s numbers showed little progress in diversity, Williams made a very similar statement.

“We have more work to do — a lot more.”

With a year gone by and Facebook only showing a 25 percent increase in female employee and a mere 2 percent increase in minority employees, what work has Facebook actually done to remedy their diversity issue? Facebook has reportedly begun working with colleges and universities to recruit diverse future employees. To explain why this hasn’t happening sooner, Facebook’s statement from last year is quite similar to that of their global diversity head.

“Like our peers, we have a lot of work to do. We’re not close to where we want to be, but we’re working on it.”

Facebook’s diversity issue is not so much a problem with hiring minorities, but with hiring specific groups of minorities. Facebook staff is 36 percen Asian, the highest minority presence in the company, according to the New York Times. The company shows the most reluctance in hiring staff who identify as Hispanic and Black. Hispanics are the third most present minority making up just 4 percent, while Black minorities have a 3 percent presence in Facebook. There have been reports which prove that Facebook is not exercising equality measures when hiring staff.

In 2013, a Equal Opportunity Commission report showed that Facebook hired only seven black people during a hiring year in which the company hired 1,200 people. To explain such exclusion, Maxine Williams blames systematic racism and inequality in the American workforce.

“We are going against hundreds of years of historical inequity. All of our investments will take years to pay off.”

The diversity problem is not just a Facebook issue. Reportedly, the entire tech industry has similar staff statistics to Facebook. Asian workers became more dominate in the Silicon Valley tech industry in 2012, and still in most companies, including Google and eBay, most employees are White and male.

[Image via antb / Shutterstock.com]