New Notification: Facebook's Staff Is Not Very Diverse

Facebook released demographic data on its employees for the first time, and white males make up a majority of the staff.

Sixty-nine percent of Facebook employees are men, 57 percent are white, and 34 percent are Asian, which means only 9 percent of the employee pie is black, Hispanic, or multiracial.

Facebook's data drop follows similar releases by Google and Yahoo this summer. The racial demographics for all three of the tech giants are very similar, almost to the percentage point. Like Facebook, Google is also 91 percent white or Asian, and Yahoo is 89 percent.

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In a Facebook blog post titled 'Building a More Diverse Facebook,' the company's Global Head of Diversity Maxine Williams wrote that diversity is essential to their mission:

Diversity is something that we?re treating as everyone?s responsibility at Facebook, and the challenge of finding qualified but underrepresented candidates is one that we?re addressing as part of a strategic effort across Facebook.

The gender and racial disparities at Facebook are amplified when you isolate senior level employees. 74 percent of senior staff is white, and 77 percent is male.

Facebook has felt pressure to release these numbers in part because its No.2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, has been an outspoken critic of male-dominated corporate culture. She is the best-selling author of the book , in which she wrote, 'Everyone needs to get more comfortable with female leaders, including female leaders themselves.'

Sandberg and othershave also acknowledged that one of the other main issues with creating a more diverse workforce is the tech pipeline. Because women and underrepresented minorities have had a historical lack of access to resources and opportunities in STEM fields, there are fewer members of these groups in the hiring pool.

Yahoo, headed by President and CEO Marissa Mayer, has the highest percentage of female employees among the three tech companies, with a 37 percent female staff. Facebook's staff is 37 percent female, and Google's is 30 percent.

However, all of these numbers are still considerably lower than the percentage of women in the overall US workforce: 47 percent.

Diversity advocates have hailed the release of these numbers as a small step in the right direction. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who launched a campaign to diversify Silicon Valley earlier this year, has lead delegations to the annual shareholder's meeting at Google, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, eBay, and other major tech firms. After Google released their diversity numbers, he commended the company for acknowledging the need to increase employee diversity:

'Silicon Valley and the tech industry have demonstrated an ability to solve the most challenging and complex problems in the world and inclusion is a complex problem,' Jackson said in a statement.

'Inclusion is a complex problem-if we put our collective minds together, we can solve that too,' he said.

Mikaela can be reached at mikaela.lefrak@globe.com or via Twitter @mikafrak.