Google revealed some company diversity numbers on Wednesday, and they’re not great. Google is 70% men and 61% white. Google says it’s not happy with these numbers, and that it wants to be better at diversity.
Here’s a look at some of the stats:
“We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google,” says Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations at Google. “We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues. Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts.”
“There are lots of reasons why technology companies like Google struggle to recruit and retain women and minorities,” Bock adds. “For example, women earn roughly 18 percent of all computer science degrees in the United States. Blacks and Hispanics make up under 10 percent of U.S. college grads and collect fewer than 5 percent of degrees in CS majors, respectively. So we’ve invested a lot of time and energy in education.”
Bock notes that Google has given over $40 million to organizations that work to bring computer science education to women and girls, and that it’s been working with historically black colleges and universities to “elevate coursework and attendance” in computer science.
Google has a diversity site where people can see its stats and look at employee resource groups such as the Asian Googler Network, the Black Googler Network, the Filipino Google Network, Gayglers, the Google American Indian Network, the Google Veterans Network, Google Women in Engineering, Greyglers, the Hispanic Googlers Network, the Indus Googler Network, Mosaic, the Special Needs Network, and [email protected]
It also shows company people programs and policies as well as efforts to increase diversity on the web at large. These include a small business training program, the small business Google+ community, the Getting Latino Businesses Online program, resources for entrepreneurs, and resources for women entrepreneurs.
Image via Google